How To Tone Down The Heat When Your Soup Is Too Spicy

You know you've been there before — you're cooking up one of your favorite soup recipes, adjusting the seasonings, and before you know it, you've overspiced the whole pot. It's such a deflating feeling thinking about all the wasted food and time, but hope is not lost yet.

While some people might get high with spicy foods, others will start to panic if they've added too much hot sauce or chili powder to a pot of soup. If the second option describes you, water your soup down to even out the spice. Simply adding more water to the pot is the easiest (and most effective) option, as it will dilute the heat with the added volume. 

Although diluting will knock the heat down a few Scoville units, any added liquid will also affect the taste and texture of your soup by watering it down. Following dilution, if your homemade soup is bland, you can fix it by adding a bit more salt, bouillon powder, or a dash of soy sauce. When cooking anything, you can always add ingredients, but you can't take them away; focus on what you can add to an overseasoned pot of soup instead of what you want to take out.

If you make your soup too spicy, you can temper the excess heat in several ways. Plain water will get the job done fine, but a flavored liquid — such as broth, stock, tomato puree, or even the liquid from a batch of beans — can help tone down the heat and add more flavor to the mix. Heavy cream, half-and-half, milk, yogurt, or sour cream also work, depending on the flavor profile of your soup.

There are other options to cool down your soup if more liquid isn't cutting it. One hack is to bulk your soup up with starchy ingredients. Rice, pasta, grains, or potatoes will add some volume and mellow out the spicy flavor a bit. If you have any leftover ingredients, such as veggies, meats, or anything else you used to make the soup (as long as it's not spicy), throw them in the pot to keep the flavors and texture in balance.