How to Make Sauce Less Spicy
Is there anything worse than coming to the end of a recipe, sitting down to a freshly cooked meal and then having your mouth on fire because the spice just isn’t what was intended? Well, there are probably a lot of things worse than that but in the moment the disappointment can be crushing. Sauces that you create for your recipes are supposed to suit your taste buds, and yet there are sauces out there that can wind up being far too spicy.
This can occur for a number of reasons, from too much measuring with your heart for spices, to mistaking one pepper for another. You want to be able to get your hot dish out onto the table in temperature, but not to the point your teeth ache. So, you need to learn how to make sauce less spicy to be able to enjoy the flavors and still have taste buds left! While we love a good flavorful and spicy hot sauce, we understand if sometimes you want to tone things down a bit. In this article, we will cover ways to lower the heat on your favorite spicy sauces.
Add something mild
If you have ingredients as part of your recipe that are more mild, add more of those than the spice. When the recipe calls for a tablespoon of a certain spice, add a quarter to start and then aas you cook, keep tasting it and add more until you get your desired spice level. Adding some of the non-spicy ingredients, such as more milk or cream, can also help you to tone down the recipe.
Remember your butter
Did you know that you can often lessen the heat of some ingredients by adding fat? Chilis, for example, have capsaicin that is oil soluble. With added fat, you’d dilute the capsaicin and take down the burning feeling. Isn’t food science fun!?
Embrace the coconut
Whether you’re making a curry or you’re enjoying spiced meats and veggies, you can always cut the heat from the spices by adding coconut milk. Coconut milk comes up in so many eastern recipes for this reason, and you can measure how much you’d like to add without compromising the overall flavor of the dish you’re trying to create.
Check out sour flavors
Believe it or not, you can remove a lot of heat from a dish by adding sour flavors. From vinegar to citric acid, you can throw off the spice from the sauce. Think lemon juice and tamarind – both of these are fairly sour and both add something to the dish while taking the heat from the spice.
Shake over something sweet
From a sprinkle of sugar to the addition of sweetener, you can bet that your sauce will be far less spicy when you add these to the dish. You can provide a distraction from the heat and cut the heat from the existing ingredients.
Whether you’ve already over-spiced a meal by accident or just want to tone down the heat of a recipe you read online, hopefully these tips will help you next time you want to bring things down to a milder level.