How can you make a sauce less spicy/hot?

Question

Sometimes when I'm making a sauce or soup that needs to be a bit spicy, I have no troubles spicing how I want to.

But if the dinner party is a bit late, or I made the sauce in advance to get time to really draw out all the flavors of the spices, vegetables and meat, sometimes I end up with a way to spicy/hot dish.

You can always pour a bit water and try to dilute it a bit, but that also takes away all of the good flavor. So is there some trick that I'm missing I can use, when this happens to me (other than being more careful or using the spices later)?

Asked by googletorp

Answer

In general, it is a good idea to go light on spices when trying a new recipe, if you're not intimately familiar with the flavor and spice combinations in question. It's a great deal easier to add spice later than it is to mask it once you've added too much.

Assuming you are reading this because you didn't do that, and have now ended up with a sauce that's far too spicy, then read on.

The pertinent question here is where is the spiciness coming from? There are actually several kinds of compounds that can produce that general aroma and/or sensation. In most dishes they'll tend to fall loosely into one or more of the following:

• Piperine, which is the active alkaloid in black pepper. This has poor solubility in water, however, it has better solubility in alcohol. If you can incorporate wine or better yet, brandy or vodka or some other strong alcohol, this can go a long way toward reducing the heat from pepper.

• Capsaicin, the heat-producing compound in most types of hot peppers, is the highest on the Scoville Scale; extremely piquant and can produce a "burning" sensation in very small quantities. It is also poorly soluble in water, but is far more soluble in fat, especially oils. Adding some olive oil or a good quantity of butter to your recipe is a good bet for reducing capsaicin/capsicum heat.

• Garlic, onion, and other members of the Allium family put out a volatile sulfur compound called Allicin. Although this is not "spicy" in the same sense as pepper, many people perceive it as such. Like piperine, it is more soluble in alcohol than in water. However, and here's the catch: That allicin breaks down into various polysulfides when cooked, and those polysulfides are fat soluble. So if you're trying to mask a strong garlic or onion flavour, it's best if you can add alcohol and fat to cover all your bases.

• If you've added too much Ginger - another ingredient often perceived as spicy - then you're dealing with Gingerols and Shoagols, the latter of which pack a much bigger punch. One of the things you can actually do with ginger is cook the spice off which converts those into much milder Zingerone. In other words, add some water to the sauce and then boil it to reduce the sauce again - you'll lose some flavour but in the process you'll break down the ginger spice.

  Alternatively (for ginger), all of the above compounds are alkali soluble, so if you add a buffering agent - say, Trisodium citrate (additive E331), it will improve the solubility a great deal. If, like most people, you don't happen to keep food additives in your kitchen, you can try using something like baking soda, but too much of that will completely ruin the taste, so be careful. In fact, don't add too much of any buffer because the acidity of most sauces is an integral part of their flavor.

I think that about covers it for common "spicy stuff" that goes in sauces. If you want to fix a dish that's too spicy, you need to know where the spice is coming from and choose what's most appropriate for that particular sauce.

You can also try to mask or balance the spice with something sweet, for example roasted vegetables or plain old sugar. That will not eliminate the heat at all, but does seem to make it more tolerable for many.

Answered by Aaronut

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Why do some powders clump in hot water?

Question

Why do some powders like flour or green tea causes lumps in hot water while other powders like sugar or cocoa readily dissolve?

Asked by Chloe

Answer

Water is a great solvent for polar molecules. Sugar, table salt, and other small polar molecules are water soluble. When you put them into water, you get a sugar resp. salt solution.

Other molecules are not soluble in water. Most organic molecules with a carbohydrate tail are insoluble (unless they have a strongly polar active group, like the shorter alcohols). Starch and cellulose are not water soluble. Most plant matter is made mainly from starch and cellulose. (The exception are fruits, which can have more fructose than starch, but still lots of cellulose).

When you put non-soluble powder into water, you are not making a solution. You are making a colloid known as sol (solids dispersed in a liquid). If you wet salt, the water will dissolve the first layer, and the second layer will be exposed. If you wet a random non-soluble powder, the water will have to wash away the first layer before it reaches the second layer, so it is hard to make the suspension without vigorous stirring.

There are some special molecules which absorb water and swell. Starch, some proteins (gelatin) and some polysaccharides (xanthan gum) are common such molecules in the kitchen. When you wet them, the water gets absorbed by the first layer. This changes the viscosity of the layer, making it thick and clingy. This forms a clump. In the core are the dry layers of powder. They are held together by a bubble of the water-swelled substance. Outside of this bubble is the water. It can't wash away the bubble, because it is so viscous, it doesn't flow into the water. And the bubble protects the core of the clump from contact with water. This happens with starchy powders like flour, or also real cocoa powder. Tea powder is mostly dried cellulose, so it is also hard to dissolve.

You mention cocoa as easily solved in water. In fact, cocoa is very hard to dissolve, so I think you are speaking of a cocoa flavored drink. A cocoa flavored drink is a mixture of dextrose, cocoa powder, and other things (but mostly dextrose). In such a mixed powder, the water dissolves the soluble molecules (the dextrose), and the insoluble particles (the cocoa powder) which were suspended in the dextrose are now suspended in the water. No neighbouring cocoa particles to cling to. So, no clumps, but an instantly homogenous drink.

Answered by rumtscho

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Keeping A Sauce From Separating

Question

Last fall I tried my hand at making a homemade hot sauce. Essentially: roast peppers, blend with vinegar, garlic, salt and other spices, put in jar for three weeks, strain and you have hot sauce.

The sauce was great, but after about a week of sitting in a jar in my fridge it separated and became rather unsightly. Of course, after shaking it up it returned to normal. Is there a way to keep a sauce like this from separating?

Thanks!

Asked by Vecta

Answer

Whenever you see a sauce separate, it's because you have an Emulsion, which is two or more immiscible liquids. In cooking, these liquids are typically water and fat.

To stabilize an emulsion, you use an emulsifier. The most common food emulsifier is lecithin, and the most common natural source of lecithin is egg yolk. If you don't want the taste of egg or your food is not going to be cooked (i.e. a vinaigrette), then it you can actually go out and buy pure lecithin (soy lecithin is common to find).

As the wikipedia entry mentions, there are other natural emulsifiers such as honey and mustard, and often when you see recipes calling for mustard when it seems to be a strange ingredient to add (such as cheese sauce), the reason is to help stabilize the emulsion.

Additionally, the most common emulsifier used in packaged or processed foods is sodium stearoyl lactylate. It sounds scarier than it is; you can buy it in the store just like lecithin.

Answered by Aaronut

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