How to cut the spiciness in food

Whether you mistook cayenne pepper for chili powder, habaneros for jalapeños—or simply misjudged how much heat you can tolerate—it's happened to all of us: your soup, sauce, or chili is way too spicy. The question is, can you, well, un-spice it?

Chiles are different from, say, salt and sugar. Whereas saltiness and sweetness increase with the amount of salt or sugar you add, a single tiny chile pepper can contain an astronomical amount of heat. This makes it easy to misjudge. But what can you do?

Just like when you use too much salt or too much sugar, there's no way to actually cancel out the spiciness. This is why the adage "taste as you go" are words to live by—or at least cook by.

But what does "taste as you go" actually mean? Good question! "Taste as you go" is an approach to cooking that says you should sample something at the beginning of cooking, toward the middle, and again right before you serve it. 

It also means that, when adding a seasoning like salt or sugar or hot chiles (especially one where an excess is liable to ruin the dish), you should add that ingredient a little at a time, and taste it along the way to see if you need to add all of it or just a bit. 

Remember, too, that it can take a minute or so for the flavors of whatever spice or seasoning you've added to fully permeate the food. So even if you do taste, if you taste too soon, you can still end up adding too much.

The theory is that if you taste as you go, you'll eliminate the majority of "I added too much whatever" problems and even when you occasionally slip up, you'll discover it before you actually serve it, thus giving you a chance to do something about it.

But suppose, during the course of tasting as you go, you discover that your dish is, in fact, too spicy. This is better than discovering the mistake only after your guests are eating. Still, now you've got to fix it.

Adding sweetness will balance out heat, and certain kinds of fat will physically wash away the burning compound in chiles (called capsaicin). Neither of these is a complete solution, however, because they do nothing to reduce the amount of spiciness in the dish.

Thus, both these remedies are best used in conjunction with the one and only way of reducing the spiciness in a dish, which is: to dilute it.

Diluting means adding more of all the other ingredients in a dish as a way to reduce the relative amount of spiciness in it. Obviously, this is easiest with something like soup, stew, or sauce. 

Of course, if you've added too much cayenne to the surface of a pork shoulder, and you discover the error before you roast it, you can simply scrape or even rinse it off. Rinsing your roast in the sink isn't an elegant solution, but it's better than the alternative. Nor, obviously, will diluting work in the case of a casserole that you've already baked—at least not if you want to keep it a casserole.

So, the principle with diluting a dish is you're going to double the volume of everything else in it while leaving the amount of spiciness the same. Why double? We're assuming that if you're trying to fix a dish, it's at least twice as spicy as you want it.

So, if it's chili, and the recipe originally called for two cans of tomatoes and a pound of ground beef, you'll add another two cans of tomatoes and another pound of meat, thereby cutting the spiciness in half.

If it's soup, add a second amount of stock, broth, or water, plus whatever meats, veggies, and noodles it calls for, in equal parts to what you started with.

Clearly, you're going to end up with a double batch of soup or chili. But it will be half as spicy as what you were trying to fix. If you can halve the amount of spiciness, we'll consider that a success.

Once you've halved the spiciness, you can now start to tinker around the edges by balancing the remaining heat with other flavors and ingredients. Generally speaking, this means adding a dairy product or adding sweetness (or both).

Dairy products like milk and cheese contain a protein called casein, which binds to the capsaicin, thereby detaching them from your tongue so they can be washed down your throat. Of course, this merely moves the heat to another location in your body, but at least it soothes your mouth.

Sweet ingredients like sugar or honey will balance out spiciness. It's almost like by giving your tongue another flavor to think about, you don't notice the spiciness so much. It's still there, but it blends in with the sweetness. Just don't add too much sugar or you'll have a whole new problem on your hands.

Even those of us who cook every day have occasional slip-ups in the kitchen. Dishes may sometimes turn out too salty, too tart, too sweet or too spicy—especially if you are sensitive to spice. There are few things worse than sitting down for a meal only to realize the dish is above your preferred tolerance level. There are ways to stop your mouth from burning if you choose to power through, like drinking milk or eating ice cubes. But better yet, there are ways to adjust a dish while you're cooking to help tamp down the spice level (yet another reason to taste your food often). Check out these six ways to salvage a dish that's too spicy before it even makes it to the table. 

Related: 28 Dinner Recipes for When You're Craving Something Spicy 

There's a lot of hype about using milk to help provide relief from spicy foods, and for good reason. The sometimes intensely hot sensation of spice we feel as spiciness comes from a chemical called capsaicin. Commonly found in chile peppers, capsaicin binds to our tongues and causes a painful sensation that we interpret as spicy. Milk and dairy products contain a protein called casein that is able to bind with capsaicin before it reaches our tongue, so it can reach fewer receptors, and lessens the sensation of spice. If your dish is too spicy, try adding heavy cream, yogurt, sour cream or butter to help mellow it out. 

Capsaicin is an alkaline molecule, so pairing it with something acidic like citrus juice or vinegar can help neutralize some of the heat. Dairy products are also acidic, which is another reason why they are effective at tempering spice. The next time your dish tastes too spicy, try adding lemon, lime or orange juice, or any style of vinegar that suits the dish and your taste preferences. Remember, a little goes a long way, so taste as you go (it's always easier to add more than to backtrack after adding too much).  

High-fat foods like nuts and nut butters can help dissolve the oils in capsaicin, making the spice feel less potent. Adding a scoop of nut butter can not only help neutralize excessive spice, but also adds protein, healthy fat and nutrients to whatever you're making. This gives us yet another reason to make sure we have peanut butter in our pantries. 

You might be familiar with the Scoville scale that measures the spice level of chile peppers. What you might not know is that the unit used to rank peppers, called a Scoville Heat Unit, is identified by how much of a sugar-water solution is needed to neutralize the spice in a taste test. Sugar is yet another kitchen staple that can help quell a dish that is a little too hot. Sprinkle in some granulated sugar, brown sugar, honey or maple syrup to get the desired effect and flavor.   

Another great way to lessen the concentration of spice in a dish is to pair it with carbs. Getting a bit of rice or potatoes in each bite can help make the spice levels more manageable. Even serving a slice of bread on the side can offer respite from the heat (bonus points if you put butter on your bread to add some casein). 

Another simple way to temper something spicy is to dilute it. This can be done by adding more of the non-spicy ingredients to a dish (like vegetables, grains, meat or broth) or even just by adding water to thin it out. A dish that seems inedibly spicy at six servings might be pleasant when it's stretched out to eight servings. This method works best with soups, stews and casseroles, but also can be applied to any sauce being used for a dish.