Picture this: You’ve just taken a bite of a super spicy red curry you whipped up in a fit of bravery (or foolishness?), and now your mouth’s on fire. And after you’ve swallowed, the heat only intensifies. You reach for a big glass of ice-cold water and wait for sweet relief, but none comes. What gives?
Most of the heat in peppers can be attributed to something called capsaicin, an oil-like compound found mainly in the membrane holding the pepper’s seeds. The problem is that drinking water to calm the burn is like throwing water on a grease fire. That’s because water is a polar substance, while capsaicin is nonpolar, so they repel each other like… well, oil and water. Water just spreads the capsaicin around, actually making the burning feeling in your mouth worse.
Enter milk. Milk, however, contains nonpolar casein, the main protein in milk and the same stuff that forms curds in your cottage cheese. Like dissolves like, so the casein molecules surround the capsaicin molecules and wash them off your tongue like soap cutting through tough grease. The moral of the story is that milk, which you probably know as the perfect pairing with all things sweet, is also the science-backed best friend of spicy foods. And those foods don’t have to be four-alarm-fire hot; even a little bit of heat complements creamy, cooling milk.
Susan Feniger is an expert on spicy foods. In 1985, she, along with Mary Sue Milliken, headed south of the border in search of authentic Mexican recipes and techniques they picked up from home cooks and street-food vendors. Now they run Border Grill, a modern Mexican restaurant with multiple brick-and-mortar locations, a food truck—and a menu that’s heavy on the chipotle, poblano, and jalapeño peppers. Watch Susan's take on this spicy, traditional Mexican dish, Homemade Chorizo Chilaquiles, that was created especially to be paired with milk:
Many of the foods on their menu would also taste great with milk, including enchiladas, chiles rellenos, tacos—anything you’d serve with hot sauce, spicy salsa, or guac, really. But you can come up with your own pairings with the help of Chef Watson. Let us explain: He’s sort of like a scary-brilliant personal chef who works for free at all hours of the day and night and basically never runs out of ideas. More exactly, he’s the brainchild of IBM, an app that draws on flavor algorithms and Bon Appétit’s database of more than 9,000 recipes to craft creative combos you probably never would have thought of on your own. He also includes suggested cooking instructions based on the logic and style of the recipes he’s analyzed. You can choose to follow them exactly, or use them as more of a loose template.
Say you enter “green chilies,” which you typically use to make salsa verde or white chicken chili in your slow cooker. One of the ideas Watson comes up with is a fettuccine that also calls for provolone, Brazilian rum, lime, and kaffir leaves. You can give that dish a go, or head in a different direction by narrowing the field, if you’d like. This could mean choosing up to three other ingredients in addition to the chilies, specifying the type of dish you want to make (think frittata, lasagna, or paella), and/or picking a style, whether that’s “comfort” or “Cali-Persian.”
For a peppery end result to pair with milk, you can also try entering spices that you’d like to cook with, such as cayenne pepper, chili powder, or red pepper flakes. Or sauces, such as Sriracha or Tabasco. And don’t forget less-obvious heat sources like Dijon mustard, ground ginger, and wasabi, a horseradish-like root that’s traditionally served as an accompaniment to sushi. Watson forgoes the Japanese setup and instead suggests adding wasabi to mini lobster rolls, stirring it into an avocado spread, and using it in a sort of pesto for seared whitefish. You can even start with the dish you want to end up with rather than the ingredients you’d like to use, like chili con carne, salsa, or fajitas, all of which go well with milk.
Gotmilk.com has some inventive ideas too. There’s a spicy Sriracha penne recipe that amps up a traditional sun-dried tomato sauce with the addition of sriracha, a spicy red chili and garlic condiment. You’ll also find a Korean fried chicken dish made with gochujang, a hot pepper paste, and served with a spicy slaw and daikon, a type of hot radish. There’s even a jalapeño cream cheese ice cream that calls for a whole pepper. The one thing all these recipes have in common: A spicy kick that milk cools.