Who among us hasn’t overestimated their spice tolerance? Trained on lesser curries or wings, we strut into local Thai or Indian joints with the showy confidence of Vince McMahon, only to end up completely bowled over by the surprising heat of a new-to-us dish. While we could have used a cheat sheet to Indian restaurant menus, what we really needed was a side of yogurt to cool off our flaming tongues.
If you know that capsaicin — the compound that makes chiles spicy — is fat-soluble, then you might have guessed that a glass of milk or a bowl of ice cream will cool your mouth down much quicker than water. But what if you’d rather mellow out the whole dish? In that case, depending on the cuisine, you can stir in some yogurt to take the heat down a notch.
The specific compound that neutralizes capsaicin is a protein called casein, which is found in dairy products. It works if you drink some milk after a mouthful of spicy food, but it also has a similar effect if it’s incorporated into your food. This is why Buffalo wings are often served with a tangy blue cheese dressing, and why many curries are made with a yogurt-based sauce; The capsaicin binds to the casein, leaving your delicate taste buds mostly unscorched.
When to add yogurt and other dairy ingredients
Of course, yogurt doesn’t necessarily play well with every dish, but you have plenty of options. Depending on what you’re making, you can utilize milk, cream, sour cream, or butter, and their caseins will bind with the capsaicin just as well as yogurt. Whether you’ve made a gochujang carbonara that got a little too spicy, or a bowl of San Antonio’s iconic chili con carne that caught you off-guard, dairy has you covered.
But a word of warning: You’re going to want to introduce the dairy to the dish at the right time. When you add cold dairy to something hot while it’s cooking, you run a real risk of the dairy curdling and forming an unappetizing texture. You’ll want to add the dairy element as close to the end of cooking as possible, if not after your dish is off the heat, entirely. With a little dollop of dairy added to your spicy dish, we promise your tastebuds will thank you.
