Give Your Hands A Buttermilk Bath To Stop Dreaded Pepper Oil Burns

There are plenty of types of peppers you can add to a recipe to take it up a notch. Whether it's pickled jalapeños, sliced habaneros, or dried chili peppers, each unique spice adds a different form of heat to a dish. But the spicy flavor that builds your recipe to peak perfection can also wreak havoc on your skin. That's thanks to a compound called capsaicin, which is what makes spicy food feel hot. Next time you find yourself with chili pepper burns, douse your hands in buttermilk; it will make all the difference.

When you slice a pepper to expose its center, capsaicin is released. Different peppers have different capsaicin levels, which is why some peppers are hotter than others. But if that capsaicin oil gets on your skin, it can overstay its welcome, often causing your hands to burn. Thanks to science, buttermilk has a way of mitigating that heat, so it's worth it to make a quick store run to grab some if you forgot to wear gloves during pepper prep.

Our hands are full of receptors that give us our sense of touch and ability to feel. When capsaicin hits those receptors, they respond in a similar way as if they were touching a hot pan, which is why you feel the burn. To create further drama, capsaicin oil isn't only limited to your hands; it can spread to anything your hands touch, so rubbing your eyes or letting your hands touch the skin on other parts of your body can be bad news.

To reduce that capsaicin pain, try bathing your hands in buttermilk. It sounds bizarre, but buttermilk is loaded with fat and a protein called casein, both of which bind to those same receptors on your skin, effectively mitigating the pain from the capsaicin. It will also help remove the capsaicin from those receptors and your hands, so it not only helps the pain but actually solves the problem. Since the fat is what's needed here, higher-fat dairy, like buttermilk, works best, but you could use another form, such as whole milk. If you don't have either of these, you can even use ice cream.

You probably have some form of dairy in the house, so this is a great solution when you make the mistake of cutting peppers without gloves. But using gloves for this process is step one to ensuring that the painful aftermath doesn't happen. Gloves prevent the capsaicin from reaching your skin in the first place, but be careful not to touch the outside of the gloves when taking them off and throwing them away.

Beyond buttermilk, you can also use a few other methods to remove capsaicin. Try dousing your hands in vegetable oil; the capsaicin doesn't like other oils, so it will slide off your hands. Follow that with a soap-and-water handwashing, and you should be good to go. You can also use rubbing alcohol (or even drinking alcohol, if it's all you have), which should be rubbed all over the burning skin. Baking soda has plenty of hacks, and helping chili burns is one of them — mix it with a little water and rub it all over your skin to soothe the affected area. Cornstarch works just as well. You can also counteract the capsaicin oil with acidic ingredients like vinegar or tomato sauce.