How To Make Noodles Less Spicy

Have you ever finally sat down with your fresh bowl of noodles and taken an eager bite only to feel as if you’ve licked the stove instead? Luckily, there are a few ways to save noodles that are too hot and spare your tastebuds the agony.

How do you make noodles less spicy? There are a few ways you can make noodles less spicy, including simply doubling the non-spicy ingredients or adding some dairy or nut butter to your noodles. Other ways of making noodles less hot are balancing out the spiciness with sweetness or acidity.

Continue reading to find out all the possible ways of making your noodles less spicy. 

5 Ways to Make Noodles Less Spicy

Extremely popular in Asian countries, noodles are loved all over the world. While making noodles at home from scratch definitely requires some skill, you can buy all kinds of noodles from your local supermarket and make them within minutes.

But what if you make them too spicy?

Adding too much spice to your noodles, such as chili powder or even black pepper, that you didn’t know was so spicy is one common way home cooks end up making their noodles too hot to handle. 

Here are some ways to tame the flame.

1. Double the Ingredients

The easiest way to make a dish less spicy is to add other ingredients to dilute it. This goes for pretty much any dish you’d like to cool down, including chili and salsa. You can add more of those that are already in the dish or new ingredients.

Here are a few options:

• More vegetables and greens
• Eggs (hard-boiled, fried, or beaten)
• Meat (chicken, pork, or beef)
• Plain noodles

If your noodle soup is too spicy, try adding more unseasoned stock or broth to tone down the heat. 

2. Use a Dairy Product to Reduce the Spiciness

Dairy is perhaps the most effective way of eliminating the extreme spiciness of a dish and can end up adding a lovely creaminess to your broth as an added bonus.

Transfer the noodles into a pan, add a couple tablespoons of heavy cream or sour cream, and mix well to distribute it evenly through the noodles. 

You can also add cheese into your noodles. Cheese works with the heat the same way other dairy products do. If you are eating dairy-free, a splash of coconut milk will also do the job. 

3. Sweeten to Reduce the Heat

Adding a small amount of sugar is a great way to neutralize the spiciness of noodles. However, you should be careful when adding sweeteners to your dish. If you add too much, you will have bigger problems than simply reducing the heat.

Maple syrup, for example, is a popular sweetening agent used in ramen or rice noodle dishes. Other options include honey and brown rice syrup. 

If it goes well with your dish, you can make a sweet sauce to drizzle on top of your noodles to bring the excessive spiciness to a balance. 

You can mix soy sauce with honey or substitute the latter with brown sugar. Either way, an easy sauce made with just two ingredients is more than capable of making your noodles less spicy. 

When adding syrups or sugar into your noodle dish, make sure you are using them in some other kind of sauce, like teriyaki or soy sauce. Don’t add these ingredients straight to the dish. 

What you can add straight to the dish are such naturally-sweet ingredients as tomatoes and corn. 

4. Balance the Spiciness With Acidity 

Adding more acidity to the noodle dish is another way of balancing out the spice in it. 

You can add acidity to your noodles with the help of citrus juices. A small amount of lemon or lime juice will not only balance out the spiciness but also enhance other flavors in the dish. 

Aside from citrus juices, different kinds of vinegars are also widely-used ingredients to add acidity to a dish. 

5. Add a Spoonful of Nut Butter

If your Asian-style noodles have turned out too spicy, adding nut butter will make all the difference. 

If you have never tried nut butter noodles, you may think that the nutty taste will be overwhelming. However, a small amount of peanut or almond butter will not overshadow the rest of the ingredients but simply reduce the heat.

You can also use tahini for this purpose. 

When adding nut butter to your noodles, make sure they are not cold. The butter will mix easily with warm noodles and bind well with other ingredients in the dish. 

What to Drink With Spicy Noodles

You may not want to add anything to your dish to tone down the spiciness. In fact, many people enjoy eating noodles with a spicy kick to them.

However, in this case too, you should know what to drink with spicy noodles to balance out the taste. You should at least be aware of what drinks you should have at hand in case you can’t handle the heat or need a bit of a reset.

Before you go ahead and grab a bottle of cold water to ease the spiciness, we will tell why that’s not a clever move. 

The Science Behind Spicy Food

You can’t tone down the spiciness of noodles with water. It can be explained by simple chemistry. 

Why noodles turn out spicy is because of a chemical called capsaicin. Capsaicin is the active ingredient responsible for the hot kick in food. It is present in red chili pepper, cayenne and jalapeño peppers, and other varieties. 

Sweet peppers also contain some capsaicin, not not enough to cause a burning sensation.

Capsaicin binds to a specific receptor on the tongue and sends signals to the brain. This is why you feel like your mouth is on fire. 

Capsaicin is an oily component. Thus, water will do nothing to it. It may relieve the pain for a few seconds if you drink it ice-cold. But it can make things worse, too.

Not only does water not blend with capsaicin, but it can also spread it even more. 

To dissolve capsaicin, you need something oily or fatty. A small amount of alcohol is also capable of dealing with this compound. 

Drinking Milk With Spicy Noodles

Having a glass of milk at hand is a great way of easing the spice of the dish if you do enjoy the taste but not the burn.

Capsaicin dissolves in fat and this is why milk is the most efficient way of easing the heat. You can both drink it or simply rinse your mouth to get rid of the heat of spicy noodles. 

Pairing Wine With Spicy Noodles

While milk is certainly a method that works, it doesn’t exactly look elegant when you have guests over and serve them a simple glass of milk.

If you want to combat the spiciness in your noodles with a drink as classy as wine, there are three simple rules to follow to make it work. 

• Avoid High-Alcohol Wines – To tame spicy noodles, wines that have low to medium alcoholic content are more suitable. On one hand, too much alcohol may make the heat more pronounced. On the other hand, you can’t drink much of high-alcohol wine, and you may need a few more sips to overcome the spice of the noodles. 

• Look for Acidic and Sweet Wines – Wines with higher acidity complement spicy food well. They contrast well with the heat and can make eating spicy noodles way more enjoyable. White wines that have crisp acidity can be a go-to drink with spicy noodles. Sipping at an acidic white wine with spicy noodles will taste like a splash of lemon juice on your dish. In addition to acidity, sweetness is another criterion to look for in wine if you are going to pair it with a spicy dish. Fruity wines that have a trace of sweetness will help alleviate the heat as well as enhance the layers of flavor in the dish. 

• Don’t Pick Sparkling Wine – Drinking fizzy wine with your spicy noodles is not the way to go. Even if you have wine that corresponds to all the rest of the criteria we have mentioned, it won’t suit spicy noodles if it’s fizzy. In fact, it’s more likely to make things a whole lot worse, as the fizziness will add an extra layer of unpleasant sensation for your mouth to process.

While the best way to tone down the spice of your noodle dish is certainly to add ingredients to dilute and neutralize the spice, drinking something acidic or fatty will help as well.

You can even add just a few ingredients to get rid of a smaller amount of spice as a well as sip at one of the beverages mentioned above to keep just enough spice in your dish to be enjoyable.

We’ve given you the best options for saving your spicy noodles, and now we’ll leave it up to you and your personal taste.

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