Nuts Are A Secret Weapon For Fighting Foods That Are Too Spicy

If you love food with heat, there are plenty of spicy dishes worth the heartburn that you need to try, like Sichuan hot pot or Jamaican curried goat. Plus, a variety of condiments include a big dose of peppers, like sambal oelek. Can't handle too much spice? If you don't have a high tolerance for tongue-burning sensations, you can still enjoy dishes with hot peppers. The easiest way is to simply dab bit of hot sauce on your dish to amp up the flavor. If you overdo it, there are fortunately numerous ways to lessen spice.

One sweet way to balance super spicy dishes, according to Allrecipes, is to add sugar or honey to your meal. It's also fairly common knowledge that milk helps with spicy food, and this is because the proteins in milk break the bonds that capsaicin, the chemical found in peppers, makes with your tongue.

Don't drink regular milk? Andrew Zimmern says he uses chocolate milk to recover from spicy food. If you only keep non-dairy or nut milk in your kitchen, that won't do much in terms of beating spice. However, nuts in other forms are yet another secret weapon to mitigating spicy food.

If you aren't already keeping almond butter in your pantry, here's another reason why you should make nut butters a kitchen staple: You can grab a handful of nuts or a scoop of nut butter to cool down your tongue when you've eaten something too spicy. Nuts and nut butters are high in fat, and capsaicin dissolves in fat and oil, according to the National Peanut Board. So whether you prefer peanut butter, almond butter, or cashew butter, these options will all dissolve the capsaicin from hot chili peppers.

When you're cooking, you can also throw in a scoop of nut butter if you realize you've added too much chili or hot sauce. SFGate recommends putting nut butter in spicy "soups, stews, and Asian dishes" (think Thai peanut noodles) and also mentions that tahini can also work in place of nut butter.

Nut butter is incredibly versatile, and while you can eat a spoonful to help with spice, all sorts of dishes utilize nut butter. Make sure you always have some on hand by making your own nut butter at home.