How To Cool Burns From Chili Peppers
Chili peppers, such as jalepeño, cayenne, and habanero peppers, contain
capsaicin, which is the main ingredient in pepper spray. Capsaicin can add
flavor and spiciness to food, but can also cause an extreme burning
sensation which can last for minutes or even hours. Capsaicin is a natural
oil found in all chilies, what we have come to call peppers. If your mouth
is burning up, here's how to cool off. These tips will likely work on your
skin, too!
Drink milk.
There's a protein found in milk called casein that acts like a detergent
against capsaicin.
It'll actually pull the capsaicin compounds away from the nerve receptor
binding sites in your mouth. Drink at least a half cup, making sure you
rinse your mouth well first.
You can spit it out, but you won't get as much relief in your throat that
way.
The colder the milk is, the more effective it tends to be against the
burning sensation.
If you don't have any milk, you may be able to coat the inside of your mouth
to soothe it with cottage cheese, cold plain yogurt, sour cream or ice
cream, which should also contain the milk protein called casein.
Drink sugar water.
Mix a tablespoon or more of sugar with a cup of water and use it to rinse
out your mouth. Cold sugar solution (10 percent) at 68 degrees is about as
effective as whole milk at 41 degrees
but the relief only lasts while the mixture is still in your mouth so you'll
need to keep rinsing and spitting until the pain subsides.
Drink alcohol.
Capsaicin is soluble in alcohol, so drinking a beer or a shot can help wash
it away. It's not nearly as effective, however, as milk.
Alcohol is a solvent to capsaicin, not a neutralizer, so it will break it
loose, but it may just spread it around.
Rinse your mouth with oil.
Capsaicin is also soluble in vegetable oils so swishing some around in your
mouth might help. Keep in mind that oil has been found to be only slightly
more effective than water in relieving pepper burns, so use it only if
nothing else is available.
Unverified Folk Remedies
Try any of the following folk remedies, but keep in mind that these methods
have not been verified in a reliable third party source.
Eat some cucumber. This is, in fact, a common way to deal with too much heat
in the food in Indonesia and Thailand.
Touch the affected area with a soft corn tortilla (lips, mouth, etc.)
Curries and other hot dishes are almost always accompanied by copious
amounts of rice in India, because starchy foods combat the burning
sensation. Potato will work as well, as will bread. Chew well, so that the
tongue is "washed" by the rice, potato or bread.
Use salt. Salting the food or eating salty chips can soothe the burn.
Try honey. Sopapillas with honey are served with spicy foods in some
restaurants.
Pepto Bismol® may stop the burn.
Try eating a raw carrot. There's no trick to swishing it around. Just take a
bite and the burn will significantly diminish.
White toothpaste can significantly reduce the burning from habanero oils on
the skin. It will likely work in the mouth and/or with other peppers.
Coconut milk works very well to cut the burn and modulate the heat level of
a spicy recipe.
Ice Cream for the same reasons as cold milk, and it has sugar.
Eat a banana. The texture and sugar content may help soothe the burn.
Eat some chocolate. The capsaicin in peppers is more soluble in fat than
aqueous based solutions, ie beer, water, even low-fat milk. The high fat
content of most chocolate bars will help to remove some of the capsaicin
from your mouth. Milk chocolate generally has a higher fat content and a
higher casein content than dark chocolate and therefore should give better
relief.
Eat an apple.
Tips
The burning sensation will fade away on its own over time.
Drinking plain water may not alleviate much of the pain and can even tend to
just spread the heat throughout your mouth by carrying the pepper
everywhere.
If you include ingredients that have lots of natural sugars, grated carrots,
sautéed onions, etc.) in a dish with hot peppers, the sugars tend to "bank"
the hotness, it's still there, but it's not the first thing you taste and
doesn't overwhelm the rest of the flavors.
To avoid burning sensation on your hands while preparing food with peppers,
rub and cover your hands with vegetable oil or wear latex or vinyl gloves.
Warnings
Avoid getting peppers in your nose, eyes, or any other openings, which is a
very painful experience. Pepper spray is made from chili peppers, so if you
have happened to have been sprayed in the past, you know what this feels
like.
Avoid getting peppers on open cuts.
Be careful handling contact lenses after handling spicy peppers. Capsaicin
is difficult to fully remove and does not completely wash away with soap and
water. If you wear contacts, it is best to use gloves while handling
peppers.
Do not try to cool burns if you're about to eat something spicy. The burn
and then cooling and then re-stimulation will hurt more.
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