The Spice To Add To A Dish If The Heat Is Overwhelming

Even if you like spicy food, sometimes it can be a bit much. Perhaps the specific spice blend used is extra hot, or maybe someone just poured too much into the dish. If, on the other hand, you're someone who finds paprika to be too much heat, the issue can be even more challenging (though you might want to try increasing your spice tolerance). While dairy is a common method of cooling spice or counteracting its tongue-tingling effects, San Diego-based chef Claudette Zepeda has another option that some may find surprising: Cloves.

At the first Food & Wine Classic in Charleston, South Carolina, the Top Chef contestant told Food & Wine that she uses ground cloves to temper the heat in her signature mole and adobo sauces. Zepeda considers herself a culinary anthropologist when it comes to Mexican cuisine, so she speaks with authority on the spices. Both sauce styles can possess a pretty broad range of heat, with many versions of mole balancing sweet and spicy notes. But if you or your guests find the heat dialed a bit too high, Zepeda says adding a pinch or two of ground cloves to the recipe will help balance chiles and other spicy seasonings and take the edge off.

The goal is to balance spices while cooking, whether making eggs, chili, or a slow-cooker chicken mole. Unlike milk and other dairy products which can be added to a recipe or rescue a mouth on fire after you've taken a bite, cloves perform their job in the dish, and the effect is much more subtle.

While there doesn't seem to be much (or any) scientific analysis of why ground cloves might reduce the burn from spicy peppers, side-by-side taste tests show it has a subtle effect in eggs, chili, and chicken adobo. Just a pinch of ground cloves adds an earthy depth and a hint of sweetness that cuts that "ant bite" tingle from very spicy seasonings. This works especially well when several spices are incorporated into the cooking, similar to the way a bit of sugar or honey can help balance heat. The spice is still there, but the soothing warmth of the clove tempers the sharp heat of the chili pepper.

There's no need to try and get equal measures of clove and pepper. Just a pinch or two is fine. Clove is a very powerful spice, both in flavor and aroma. In lighter dishes, like eggs or a brothy soup, they can also affect the color of the final product. Remember, many mole, curry, and chili recipes include cloves as part of a dish's spice matrix. Instead of adding too much, it's better to just grab that glass of milk.