Perhaps you've been trying to make that perfect batch of hot sauce to go with your chicken wings, but you added one chili too many. Or maybe you got a little too heavy-handed with with the bottle of hot sauce while trying to kick up your spaghetti sauce. Whatever the case, you don't have to try to bear the heat or throw away the whole batch. Aside from adding more of the other ingredients to dilute the heat, there are other household ingredients that you can use to decrease the heat in your hot sauce.
Add a sugar-based ingredient. The sweetness of sugar helps to take the bite out of spicy foods. Adding a can of crushed pineapples to your hot sauce will help reduce the heat while barely leaving a trace of the pineapple flavor. Also, if you are making a sauce for meat, such as hot wings or a burger, add barbecue sauce. You will create a sweet — yet spicy — mixture where the two sauces complement each other.
Add an acid-based ingredient. Adding a little fresh-squeezed lime will impart flavor, while helping to reduce the heat in the hot sauce. Adding more cider vinegar — the base liquid in many hot-sauce recipes — to make the hot sauce, also works to help reduce the heat. Dilute the heat by adding more vinegar than the recipe originally calls for.
Add dairy products to the hot sauce if appropriate. This would only work if you are using the hot sauce as a part of a larger recipe that calls for dairy or is complemented by a diary product. For instance, a too-hot chili recipe can be cooled down with a dollop of sour cream.
Cut up a peeled potato in to large chucks and place the chunks in the hot sauce. Potatoes absorb the flavor or whatever they are cooked in, and thus will absorb some of the heat from the hot sauce.
Tip
If the sauce is still too spicy, freeze the hot sauce in an ice cube tray. Thaw the hot-sauce cubes individually, and use them one-by-one to add just a little bit of spice to a stew or sauce.
The amount of ingredients to add to cut the heat depends on how much hot sauce you have and how mild you want to get it. Add ingredients a little at a time and taste the sauce regularly before adding more.
References
Writer Bio
Based in Los Angeles, Zora Hughes has been writing travel, parenting, cooking and relationship articles since 2010. Her work includes writing city profiles for Groupon. She also writes screenplays and won the S. Randolph Playwriting Award in 2004. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in television writing/producing and a Master of Arts Management in entertainment media management, both from Columbia College.