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It has happened to every person trying to cook: your soup, sauce, or chilli is way too spicy. This can be caused by mistaking cayenne pepper for chilli powder, habaneros for jalapeños, or simply misjudging how much heat you can bear. But the question stands: can you kind of un-spice it?
Chiles are not like sugar or salt, for example. A little chilli pepper can pack an incredible amount of heat, yet sweetness and saltiness grow with the added sugar or salt. This facilitates error in judgement. However, what are your options?
Here are some of the easiest hacks for removing the spice from your dish and making it pleasant.
Reduce The Spice With These 7 Hacks
1. Taste As You Go
There's no way to truly balance out the spice, just like there's no way to undo too much sugar or salt. For this reason, you should live by the proverb "taste as you go"—or at least follow it when cooking. But what does it really mean to "taste as you go"? It is an approach to cooking known as "taste as you go" that suggests tasting food at the start, halfway through, and again just before serving.
2. Dilute Your Dish
To lessen the dish's overall level of spice, diluting involves adding more of all the other components. Of course, this works best with a sauce, stew, or soup. Also, you can always scrape or even rinse off a pork shoulder if you accidentally add too much cayenne and realise this before roasting. Although it's not a very beautiful approach, rinsing your roast in the sink beats the other option.
3. Add Sweetener
Although a small amount of sugar doesn't truly take away the heat, it does assist to balance the tastes and lessen your awareness of it. Your best bet is honey, but sugar or cinnamon can work just as well. Just be careful how much sweetener you add; if you add too much, you'll have to deal with another issue.
4. Add Dairy
Good dairy products include cheese, yoghurt, milk, and cream. It makes sense to use sour cream to chill Mexican foods like tostadas, burritos, and enchiladas. Even though it's not a dairy product, coconut milk tastes great with many Asian foods and adds an amazing smoothness to them. It is a win-win situation, the dish get mellow with cream and get extra smooth.
5. Use Citrus
Since capsaicin is an alkaline molecule, its heat can be somewhat mitigated by consuming it with an acidic food or drink, such as vinegar or citrus juice. Another reason dairy items work well to balance spice is because they are acidic. Try adding lemon, lime, orange juice, or any kind of vinegar that compliments the meal and your taste preferences the next time your food tastes too spicy. Taste as you go, keeping in mind that a little goes a long way.
6. Add Nuts or Nut Butter
Foods high in fat, such as nuts and nut butter, can aid in dissolving the oils in capsaicin, reducing the heat of the spice. Not only can a dollop of nut butter provide minerals, healthy fat, and protein to whatever dish you're preparing, but it can also help balance out too much heat. This is just more justification for one to stock up on peanut butter in our pantries.
7. Add Some Grains Or Starch
As a bonus, serving a dish with carbohydrates will help to reduce the amount of spice it contains. The heat levels can be more tolerable if you have a little bit of rice or potatoes with each bite. A slice of bread served on the side can provide some relief from the heat. This will also make the dish heavier and filling!
If you decide to push through, there are methods to prevent your mouth from burning, such as consuming milk or ice cubes. Even better, though, is that you may modify a recipe while it's cooking to help reduce the amount of spice. Next time, try these tips to keep your food!
