How can you reduce the heat of a chili pepper?

In Indian cooking we usually add Ghee (Clarified butter) to reduce the heat of a chili pepper. Most Indian dishes, we would add a good heaping spoon of ghee before feeding little ones. This helps temper the heat but keeps the flavors alive so that the children get used to them and can gradually learn to eat hotter foods.

This site talks about this a bit.

It says that ~60% of the capsaicin heat is in the pith and ~40% is in the seeds and other parts of the flesh. It suggests removing and discarding the pith and seeds to reduce the heat. It also suggests soaking the peppers in vinegar for a day. I guess depending on what you're cooking this may or may not work.

Also, since the capsaicin "is an alkaloid oil, it is soluble in acid, fat or alcohol", perhaps you can try to soak it in one of these things and that will reduce the heat.

I have found that roasting peppers and removing their skins can do a great deal to reduce the heat. I have a garden full of jalapeños and I roast many of them before putting them in salsas or eating them plane. The roasting does change the flavor, but I find that it mellows it out, while not eliminating it. It is your choice to keep the seeds or not, they maintain their heat for the most part, the roasting primarily affects the flesh. I roast till the skin is turning brown/dark brown in a couple of spots, set the peppers aside and when the are cool to the touch remove the skin and what ever else you choose.

One sure way to reduce the heat is by adding some coconut milk powder. This thickens the dish a bit.

Although this may be a different solution to the question, you might just try some of the more flavorful mild peppers in combination with the hotter choices in the recipes you prepare. A sweet paprika pepper is wonderfully flavorful. A minimal amount of habanero in a recipe would still impart its flavor. Roasting the peppers may also intensify the flavor you want to emphasize.

A bleach solution will neutralize the capsaicin (or at least, make it water-soluble). Making the pepper edible after that may be another issue, though . . . (Disclaimer: don't actually try this)

A safer way to draw oil out of the peppers may be to soak them in alcohol first. Unfortunately, anything that will extract capsaicin will also extract the other flavorful (but non-hot) oils from the pepper. You may end up with a less spicy pepper, but it may also be less tasty.

This is a great question, but unfortunately, it is not possible.

The reason is the Capsaicin compounds. Let me explain.

Capsaicin compounds are a very interesting substance that does not actually damage the tissues, instead it binds to your sensory neurons and tricks them into sending the message that the tissue is burned and under abrasive damage. It is a perfect trick of the mind (and nervous system) you may say. All this time NO DAMAGE TAKES PLACE .

Any redness, swelling, etc is just a auto-response of the body.

It is funny to know that birds do not have this type of receptors and tat may consume the hottest chillies without having any unpleasant sensation.

At the same time, this very same compounds are very flavorful and perceived as such by the appropriate receptors.

There is not a district "flavor" component to the chillies, it is the Capsaicin compounds and they "burn".

Yes , was they are soluble in fats, mixing them with butter as Ambuja suggested or with high fat yogurt attenuates the burning sensation as it does no longer come in small concentrated portions.

Alternatively, start to teach your body and brain that it is nothing to fear by slowly building tolerance to it. I am sure that Ambuja knows a lot about this :D

No easy way out on this one , sorry :P

I just made a chicken chili with habaneros from my garden. It was crazy hot. Too each bowl, I added a heaping tablespoon of plain nonfat greek yogurt. It tamed the heat considerably and brought out the flavors. I also added a little fresh lime and cilantro - so good now.

Adding cream or milk to the dish softens the hotness. Even drinking a glass of milk during the meal helps.

Drinking Alcohol with the meal has the opposite effect btw.

The taste (that isn't heat) is primarily in the skin; most of the heat is in the pith and seeds. Remove the inside and you have the taste without the heat.

One way to use peppers without bearing the brunt of the burn is to saute some in oil, discard the pepper and utilize the oil. Doing this, as with paprika, will alter and roast the flavor, changing it somewhat. Whether that is good or bad is for you to decide (although you can of course use a lower heat to roast it less). However, if you discard the pepper and keep the oil you will keep some of the flavor but it will be mostly just the heat.

A better way is to counterbalance the heat with complements and supplements. It will buffer, but also allow you to make the most use of capsaicin neutralizing agents while preserving flavor.

Incorporating nice fatty elements in the dish is a good way of introducing a complementary element that reduces the heat and allows the mouth to have ammo to dissolve the oils. It could be milk, butter, or bacon but fats will absorb the heat.

A supplementary element would be one that augments the flavor into a wheel so the heat isn't completely out of balance and the flavor of the pepper comes through more. For instance, if you look at good habanero hot sauces, they typically have citrus fruit concentrates in them. Whether you use orange, mango, lemon these elements assist in bringing out the fruity quality of the habanero. Supplements come in pairs though, so you add a nice bright flavor (i.e. orange concentrate) and a sweet (i.e. brown sugar).

Instead of washing out the heat, and the flavor/character of the pepper too, I have found in making food that it is ideal to balance it out instead with complements and supplements.

I just saw a tool on the blog Peppers and More called the Pepper Shark. It is a tool specifically for use in trimming the heat (ie cutting out the seeds etc) of peppers and keeping the flavorful parts.

A technique that I use is to cut the chillies in half, and de seed them, then soak in water for a while before cooking. This tends to leave a lot of the flavor but reduce the heat.

I've been fermenting my jalapenos and other hot peppers by deseeding, chopping fine, adding sea salt as I would when making raw sauerkraut, putting a weight on them and leaving them on my counter for several days. When they turn olive green, I put them in the fridge. I keep the weight on them and they last for as long as it takes to eat them--so far, a few months. I notice the heat slightly, but it is very easy to eat a heaping tablespoon on my sandwich and it tastes delicious. As with other vegetables, the fermenting process preserves as well as enhances the flavor. (I added them to our tuna sandwiches for lunch and no one seemed to notice.)

Heating over 190 degrees C causes capsaicin to break down.

A fairly scientific-ish PDF of a study can be found here.

This might be complete nonsense, and would depend entirely on the vaporization temperature of capsaicin, but have you considered bunging some peppers in a Rotovap to see what happens?

If it is at all possible if you remove the seeds then it will greatly reduce the heat of your peppers. That has a great deal to do why as a general rule of thumb the larger the pepper the bigger the chance to reduce the heat. You can actually remove the seeds but with those small devils it becomes difficult if not impossible.

PS I have not read the other answer so this may have already been discussed.

Clean with water, remove the seeds and soak in sparkling water and add lemon juice, keep en refrigerator 2 hours. Good luck

I cooked a sauce with chilli to eat with chicken. It was very hot and then I put spinach in a frozen block in. When we ate it, the heat was dramatically reduced, so perhaps the folate or nitrate in spinach effects the heat of the chilli.

Disclaimer: pure speculation...

This won't reduce by the 90%+, but maybe it will help a little: I've read how the pickers of peppers have to use gloves to prevent getting burned. Perhaps a higher concentration of capsacin is in the skin, and cleaning them by rubbing with something (bleached water, ghee, alcohol, oil-soaked paper towels, all of the above???) might reduce the strength. Or, for that matter, peeling them. This is all a guess of course.