Luke's Cookbook | Sriracha Rouille

Ingredients

1 thick slice bread, crusts off, torn (about ½ cup packed) — or ⅓ cup panko, or a scant ¼ cup dry breadcrumbs ¹
3 tablespoons warm water
2 garlic cloves — or ¼ teaspoon garlic powder ²
3 tablespoons sriracha
½ teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon salt
⅓ cup olive oil (regular, not extra virgin)

Soak the bread in the water for a minute, then squeeze out most of the liquid.
Blitz the bread, garlic, sriracha, paprika, lemon juice, and salt to a rough paste.
With the motor running, pour in the oil in a thin stream until glossy and thick enough to hold a spoon-shape. Loosen with water a teaspoon at a time if it’s too stiff.
Season aggressively — there’s no fat here to mute the garlic and chili.
If using fresh garlic, rest in the fridge at least 1 hour before serving, ideally overnight — it’s harsh right off the blade and mellows as it sits. Skip this if you used garlic powder; it has no raw bite to mellow out, and it’s already sitting in the sauce’s liquid, which is all it needs to bloom.

Use whatever’s on hand. Fresh, soft sandwich bread should be a day or two old (or dried a few minutes in a low oven) — straight out of the bag it’s too wet and turns gluey when soaked. Anything firmer (a dinner roll, a bagel, a hot dog bun heel) or already dry (panko, breadcrumbs) doesn’t have that problem and goes in as-is. Panko or breadcrumbs are more absorbent than a torn slice, so add the extra water a teaspoon at a time until it squeezes into a paste instead of staying crumbly. ↩︎
Garlic powder is made by drying garlic with heat, which deactivates the enzyme that raw garlic needs to form its sharp, harsh bite — so there’s no bite to wait out. It does need a little liquid to bloom its flavor rather than tasting flat, but blitzing it in with the soaked bread, water, sriracha, and lemon juice already takes care of that. Good option if you want this ready to eat right away instead of making it ahead. ↩︎