Introduction
Soup makes a fast and easy meal. One cannot deny that fact. It can be delicious, but what if you add too many spices accidentally? No worries, there are many ingredients you can add to your soup to give back its pleasant flavor. Still, there is always an option to mask the spiciness with side dishes and serve them together. Nevertheless, if you overdo with condiments, how to make soup less spicy? Is there a way to reduce that taste?
I will start with my personal story when I was a student. One day I was cooking meat, potato, carrot, cabbage soup, while studying for economics class. While I was all immersed in the principle of supply and demand in my head, I somehow confused ginger and reddish, and add bunch of ginger pieces to the soup.
I keep reading, soup keeps cooking. I am hungry – hard concepts require brainwork, and the brain wants nutrients. Finally, it is 40 minutes and considerably basic stew soup is ready. I pour this hit steamy stew on a plate, let it cool for 5 minutes. This makes me even more hungry.
After taking the largest spoon I have and quickly indulge myself by taking several spoonful portions into my mouth!
At first, I did not understand what the hell has happened. I just started crying without being sad or sorry for anything. Then this ginger spice hit my mouth senses so strikingly, vividly clear, that I wanted to jump. I did not scream but yelled a few really bad words. Then a few more. It was super spicy ginger and a lot of it.
I had to throw soup away because I did not know how to fix it then. I went hungry to class. And unhappy. I learned my lesson and did my research. Here you go – enjoy the summary and read on for details!
The best solutions for different types of spices
So, let us see what kind of problematic spice you have and how to tame the heat in that case:
Spice | Ingredient to use to reduce spicy flavor |
Chili peppers | fats and oils and tomatoes (some use honey) |
Black pepper | alcohol (wine, beer, vodka, etc.) |
Garlic and onion | fat AND alcohol together |
Too much salt | something acidic or dilute with starch like potato |
Ginger | cook longer to reduce flavor |
Garlic ( to remove its taste) | fat and alcohol |
Curry | Oil, vegetable oil |
Any spicy soup | Olive oil (add several teaspoons), starch (like potato or cornstarch), cream, yogurt, fat, cheese, sweets, sugar, brown sugar honey, molasses, chocolate, lemon or lime, vinegar… |
HOW TO MAKE HOT AND SOUR SOUP LESS SPICY WHILE COOKING
So, the only truly possible way to make the soup less spicy while cooking is by balancing flavors. Just decide what the problem is and try to reduce the spice heat by adding one or another ingredient. Some ingredients cancel each other’s effect. There are many effective methods. Each of them has pros and cons.
1. Add something sweet
How do you make soup less spice? Just add something sweet to balance flavors. Sugar and honey work well with cayenne pepper. Simply stir them into the dish. Speaking about sugar, it is recommended to take brown sugar as the best option. Also, consider the fact that sugar is more effective when you combine it with acidic ingredients. Of course, most of the time you cannot crush the pineapple to the pot as it would rarely be an appropriate addition. Just take some vinegar instead.
Does sugar make your spicy soup less spicy?
Yes, by sweetening a soup with sugar or honey, you can remove excess spice. But adding too much sugar will spoil the taste. If you could rate this method, you would give 2 of 5.
2. Add more liquid
Oh, my! The soup is too hot! How to make my soup less spicy? The first thing that comes to your mind is diluting your dish with water or broth or any liquid you have at hand. The only option to make this method effective is if you are going to double the volume of everything else in your soup while leaving the amount of spiciness the same.
Why double? You are trying to fix the dish and make your soup less spicy. So, if your soup has too much spice and the recipe recommends taking two cans of tomatoes and a pound of ground beef, you should take another two cans of tomatoes and more meat.
What is the effect of this simple trick? You simply make the spice less concentrated by adding more liquid. For tomato soup, you simply throw in extra tomatoes as well as tomato juice adding more to what it says in the recipe. For some other soup recipes, just go by adding stock or even just plain water.
Warning:
The main problem you may face when adding water is that you lose flavor. Even if you add broth instead, the flavor of the soup will be bland and less aromatic. You can use vegetable, beef, or chicken broth plus additional fat from a meat broth can help to reduce the spice. If you are trying to fix a too salty soup, then it is probably smart to choose an unsalted broth.
3. Add starchy ingredients
There is a brilliant way to make your spicy soup less spicy in the process of cooking. You can simply add potatoes, carrots, and other starchy veggies. Neutral starches simply absorb the spicy ingredients to the point that you can use them well to simply soak in extra spice. Let us think, you can use potato for your soup even if it is not right for the dish, just REMOVE THEM BEFORE SERVING. Shrewd?
Does starch make spice less spicy?
This method is really helpful and can be rated 3 of 5. Remember, starchy ingredients work like a sponge. They are not fixing your soup by reducing spice. They just soak up flavors. That is why you may throw away the starch that absorbed spices.
4. Add something acidic
The acidity of lemon juice or vinegar can mask the spice heat in your soup. You should pour in 1 tbsp of lemon juice or vinegar to offset the spice. Speaking about cayenne, the vinegar works well. Of course, additional acid may not work in all dishes.
What else can you use for adding acids to your soup, except for lemon juice? You can try different types of vinegar for various types of soups. Other interesting methods are lime juice which works even better for white soups.
Warning:
It may happen that acids do not fit every type of soup. So, trying to reduce heat in such a way makes things even worse. Use trial method – try which works for a portion of the soup. Just pour some in the soup plate, add acid, and see if it worked.
5. Add some dairy
There is an option to make your spicy soup less spicy by diluting it with milk. Do dairy products, especially milk, really reduce spiciness? Yes, they do. Everyone knows that milk can put out a fire in your mouth.
The fats in dairy products help your mouth deal with spicy oils. Milk’s casein proteins can dilute the spicy flavor. They also have absorbing properties. Adding some kind of milk fat product will fix your dish and win the game.
Warning:
You are risking when mixing these dairy products into the soup. First, milk does not suit every type of soup and you may ruin its taste.
Secondly, be careful with milk, especially when you are preparing the soup for unknown guests. They may have allergies or other lactose-intolerant problems.
The same problem comes with adding yogurt or sour cream to your soup. But if you are ok with dairy – this is another way to go.
6. Add a drop of coconut milk
It is better to make creamy and fatty coconut milk. Fats absorb spiciness. There is only one issue. Not everyone likes the strong flavor of coconut milk. What is more, it doesn’t fit every type of soup. Before you decide to mix coconut milk with your soup, check if it works well with other ingredients. Nevertheless, it’s a good solution if you like the flavor of coconut.
7. Rebalancing the ingredients
This method gets 5 of 5, of course, if you have some time and ingredients to waste. So, let’s start correcting your soup. You should add more of all the ingredients, except spices, of course, to balance the soup. By doing this, you can enchant the flavor but reduce the heat. The only issue is you’ll get more soup than planned. Do you know what to do with leftovers? Of course, you can keep your soup in the fridge for some time.
HOW TO MAKE SOUP LESS SPICY AFTER COOKING
The easiest way to tone down a dish that’s too spicy is to add more ingredients to lessen the proportion of the spicy element. Nevertheless, there are more methods to make your spicy soup less spicy after cooking just before you serve it.
1. Add sour cream (or any such cream)
Top your soup with sour cream if you don’t mind thickening it. How to do that? Just take a spoon or two of sour cream and stir it into the broth. It is better to take fatty cream, the creamier the better. The fat in the sour cream helps to mask the spices and make your soup more watery but creamier. Try it.
If the soup continues to feel spicy, add one or two more spoons of sour cream and blend. Remember, sour cream is the best fixing method for such soups as taco, chowder, or even chili.
Instead of using sour cream, you can use other creamy products. Just dig into the refrigerator and find some fatty yogurt, including plain yogurt and add it in. Mexican crema or cream cheese also works fine. Half and half too.
2. Add some cheese
This method will help when you suddenly saw how bad the situation is and don’t have time for fixing it. Do you have any cheese in your fridge? You can sprinkle it on your soup to mask the spicy flavor.
For your soup, you can use pretty much all types of hard cheese (but not cottage cheese), whichever you can find in your grocery store. Make sure the cheese that your add-in is not spicy by itself.
Let the cheese melt in the pot and test. How is it? You can add more cheese if you still think there’s too much spicy. By the way, cheese fits chili and chowder soups the most.
Finally, you turn it into a cheese soup! Swiss, cheddar, jack – any hard cheese will do the trick.
3. Have something to eat as a side
It was said before that you can add potatoes or any other starchy veggies for diluting spiciness. As a bonus, the potato also dilutes salt. What if your soup is ready and the guests are waiting at the table? You do not have time for boiling potatoes. You can pick something to eat as a side dish with your soup. It can be bread, crackers, chips, anything.
The point is the chosen side dish should not be spicy. Otherwise, it can hardly help to make your hot and spicy soup less spicy. Spread butter or oil on your side dish since the fats can make the starches even more effective at neutralizing the heat.
MORE mix-and-match solutions to fix your soup flavor
If you feel like you are hopelessly embraced fighting with spices in the soup, you can try to add more than one ingredient or combine different fixing methods.
Is chili soup too spicy? You can add fatty avocado, a spoon of sour cream or something from dairy, a squeeze of lime, and sprinkle some cheese on top.
Is there an unnecessary amount of pepper? Add a half cup of yogurt, some sugar, and slightly more broth.
If you added more pepper than necessary either intentionally or by mistake, do not panic and relax because it is fixable. But before you throw out that dish you’ve worked so hard to create, take a few deep breaths and relax. There must be a method to make your spicy soup less spicy.