I made chile with a habanero pepper; it is inedible. Anything I could add to the chile to reduce the heat factor?

I would hate to throw 3 lbs of ground sirloin away..any ideas what would cool the chili off?

Comments

[garnishrecipes]

I'm with roadhockey on this: I add a little brown sugar, and some pineapple if the dish will tolerate its flavor.

Best of luck!

[NobodyInParticular]

Sour cream and unsweetened yogurt could help in two ways: the emulsified fats could carry away some of the capsaicin, and the sugar in them could help to mask the heat. Cornbread or potato flakes could sweeten it a touch as well.

I would try these first. If they didn't work, add a bit of lemon juice or vinegar and let your chili sit for a few days. (I assume you already picked out all the chilies you could.) The heat should mellow out a bit after some days in the fridge.

Lemonie's method of dissolving and pouring off the capsaicin sounds plausible, but I agree that it might end up rather oily. You might have better luck trying this with a strong alcohol (which you can more easily get rid of by cooking).

Random thought: Try mixing a little of the chili with a pinch of ground cloves and reheating. Does it mask the heat? I'm not sure.

Another option: Forget about cooling it off. Put the chili in the freezer until you can find someone crazy enough to eat it as is.

[tato312]

I could eat it, im mexican, and, no offense, but seems that americans do not tolerate pepper as much as us, I dont know why, maybe it is because you dont eat it as much as we do?

[lemonie]

I'm inclined to agree with your last suggestion. L

[roadhockey]

My initial thought was...send it to me, I'll eat it :-) Starches (potato) tame the salt and I love Oryctolagus habilis's suggestion for the acids (baking soda). The only real answer for the heat is time... sitting in the fridge or simmering (cooking really is the beast way to tame the heat). However for a quicky fix, Sugar (granular, honey or molasses). Dairy (cheese or sour cream) increases the palatability of that spicy beast. Ole!

[Oryctolagus habilis]

I don't know how useful this is for capsaicin, but a pinch of baking soda neutralizes overly acidic tomato sauce; that might help a little?

[ChrysN]

If you dab sour cream, or plain yogurt on top it may cool it off a little.

[lemonie]

Mmm, how many habaneros did you use?
You could stir in half a pint of oil, give it a good stir let it settle, then pour the oil off. I don't know how well this would work because I like chilli hot and have never tried it, but the hot stuff (capsaicin) is fairly greasy and oil-soluble, you might extract enough (into the oil) of it to make the chilli edible. You're not going to lose anything more than the oil, being a bit more oily but edible would be better than inedible.

L