What vegan food or drink helps to cool off after spicy food?

Question

When people eat something that's too spicy and they want to relieve the heat, one thing that's common to drink is full-fat milk or cream. What would be a good dairy-free, vegan alternative food or drink that helps to soothe the mouth after eating very spicy food?

Answer 1

The reason for suggesting milk or cream is that capsaicin, the irritant in chillies, is soluble in fat, not in water. Thus, you can put some cooling cashew/coconut/soya/almond (etc) cream/yogurt/mylk (etc) in your mouth and it will work just as well as dairy, as long as it has a reasonable fat content. I quite often serve some kind of dairy-free yogurt-based or tofu & oil-based or cashew-based sauce/dip with spicy food.

However, I find a mouthful of absorbent, starchy carbohydrate food, such as rice or bread, is at least as effective as creamy liquid and possibly more so. I haven't found any particular scientific reason for this method's efficacy; my assumption is that the food simply absorbs some of the liquid containing capsaicin from your mouth. If I'm eating spicy food with someone (often a child) who seems to be suffering, I always suggest trying this technique (which is generally convenient since spicy food is usually served with carbs like rice and bread) and they've always agreed that it works (though it's possible they're just being polite).

Answer 2

Anything with a good fat content should work. Avocado, peanut butter, tahini, coconut cream, soy/rice/almond/cashew milk are all items I've used for this purpose.

Answer 3

Rice. It’s very common in East Asian countries (e.g., Japan and Korea) to serve plain white rice with a meal, especially with spicy dishes.

Coconut milk is also often added to dishes in South East Asia to reduce the heat.

Answer 4

Eat a fruit that has a sour taste (like oranges or a few drops of lime), it immediately reduces the heat in your mouth.

Answer 5

Some plain white rice or bread/chapati would do very good. You can also eat some biscuits.

Note: Just-in- case you would like to consider/recommend to others, these are some very effective dairy options:

1. A glass of buttermilk: gives instant relief: contains very little fat
2. White rice mixed with curd and a little salt for taste
3. Steaming white rice with cow ghee (refined butter), with some salt and lemon juice for taste.