Feel the burn
November 14, 2009 4:52 PM   Subscribe

How can I make this delicious Indian food a little less spicy?

My awesome Indian neighbor just stopped by my house and gave me a bowl of food. It's chopped angelhair noodles mixed with peas and a very spicy brown/yellow condiment - tastes like chilli to me, not the kind of tomatoey flavors you get in restaurants. I'm liking it a lot but it's *really* hot - I can actually see large chunks of what looks like chilli paste.

How can I tone it down a bit for my Anglo palate? I'm eating it with Greek yoghurt but even that is not enough!
posted by media_itoku to Food & Drink (9 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Dairy fat is good (is your yogurt made from whole milk?), as is adding more of something like peas, potatoes, zucchini. I would then eat it over rice.
posted by oneirodynia at 5:12 PM on November 14, 2009


Forgot to mention, coconut milk is also good for diluting hot flavors.
posted by oneirodynia at 5:14 PM on November 14, 2009


+1 dairy.
posted by jeffamaphone at 5:14 PM on November 14, 2009


Cook more angel hair noodles and mix them in.
posted by Juliet Banana at 5:24 PM on November 14, 2009


Peanut butter or tahini also helps with cutting the heat from a spicy food, though of course it only works with certain dishes for certain tastes.
posted by idiopath at 5:28 PM on November 14, 2009


The best you can do is drink milk with it, really. Nothing else is going to work, says science!
posted by InsanePenguin at 7:09 PM on November 14, 2009


Seconding drinking milk / adding dairy

Also try having a side dish of sliced cucumber with it
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:20 PM on November 14, 2009


Take your yoghurt, get a cucumber and some mint, and make raita.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:52 PM on November 14, 2009 [1 favorite]


The yogurt suggestions are good. I suspect the chunks you see are what I grew up calling "pickle" which is a very spicy condiment. Unless it's mixed in evenly (which it usually isn't), you should be able to eat a bite with pickle and then some bites without, which is a good way to damp it down. I haven't had this particular dish before, so I don't know if it would be weird with the noodles, but one of the ways to make hot Indian dishes very bearable is to eat them with flat bread: nan, chippati, roti. Don't use a fork. Tear off a piece of bread, wrap your bite in it with your fingers and pop it into your mouth. It damps down the spice quite a bit. Otherwise, the adding more noodles suggestion is also a good one.
posted by carmen at 6:33 AM on November 15, 2009


« Older I need help with a new complicated relationship....   |   Rent to own house in Brooklyn, thoughts? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.