Ingredient

Chilli

Chilli heat is not a taste. It is a chemical binding to the same receptors that detect actual heat, which is why your body responds to a hot curry as though you had burned yourself — and why water does nothing about it.

Where the heat lives

The compound responsible is concentrated in the pale, spongy membrane — the placenta — that the seeds are attached to, not in the seeds themselves and not in the flesh. Seeds taste hot because they have been sitting against the membrane, which is why deseeding a chilli reduces the heat: you take the membrane with them.

So you have a dial. Whole chilli, split, seeds and membrane removed, flesh only — each step down takes out a large fraction of the heat while keeping most of the fruity, vegetal flavour. A chilli is not only a heat source, and treating it as one is why so much chilli cooking tastes hot and of nothing else.

Fresh, dried and ground

Fresh green

Grassy, sharp, immediate heat. Best added late or raw.

Fresh red

The same chilli ripened. Sweeter, fruitier, often slightly hotter.

Dried whole

Deeper, raisiny, sometimes smoky or chocolatey. Toast briefly in a dry pan and soak in hot water before use — this is where Mexican cooking lives.

Flakes

Uneven heat with some seed. Good scattered at the end where you want visible heat.

Ground or powder

Even and easy to overdo. Bloom in fat to open the flavour; stirred into liquid it stays dusty.

Chipotle

Jalapeño, ripened and smoked. Smoke plus heat, and the smoke is often the reason to use it.

Controlling the heat

Heat can be added at any point and can barely be removed, so build it in stages and taste.

• Add early for background, late for a sharp edge. Chilli simmered for an hour distributes its heat through the dish; chilli stirred in at the end sits on top of it.
• Fat carries it. Capsaicin dissolves in fat and not in water, so chilli bloomed in oil spreads its heat everywhere, while chilli dropped into a watery broth stays localised.
• Sugar, acid and dairy all reduce the perception of heat without removing any. A squeeze of lime, a spoonful of yoghurt or a little sugar will rescue a dish that has gone too far.
• Chillies vary enormously, even within one bag from one plant. Taste a sliver before you commit six of them.

When you have overdone it

For a dish that is too hot to eat, in rough order of how well they work.

• Add dairy — yoghurt, cream, coconut milk, soured cream. The fat and the milk protein both physically carry capsaicin away from the receptors.
• Add acid — lime, lemon, vinegar, tomato. It cuts the perception sharply.
• Add a little sugar. Not enough to taste sweet; enough to blunt the edge.
• Add bulk — more of everything else, or a starch such as rice, potato or bread served alongside. Dilution is the crudest fix and the most reliable.
• Do not drink water. Capsaicin is not water-soluble, so water spreads it around your mouth and briefly makes it worse. Milk works; so does a mouthful of rice.

Keeping a glut of chillies

A single plant produces far more than anybody plans for.

• Freeze them whole. No blanching, no preparation. They chop straight from frozen and lose very little heat.
• Pickle them, sliced or whole and pricked. The heat mellows and the vinegar left behind becomes chilli vinegar, which is worth as much as the chillies.
• Ferment them into a hot sauce. Brined for a fortnight and then blended, which gives a rounder, more savoury acidity than vinegar alone.
• Chilli oil, where the oil temperature decides everything — too hot and the chilli scorches bitter in seconds.
• Dry them, whole on a string or slowly in a low oven, then crush them into flakes.
• Chilli jam or jelly, set on an apple base, which is excellent with cheese.

Common questions