How to Spice Up and Cool Down Curries

Curries are known for being hot and spicy, but milder curries are just as popular and are often more family friendly. Most curry recipes cater to milder tastes but give the option to dial up the heat with extra ingredients. In addition, hot curries can easily be tamed with cooling side dishes. Follow our expert tips and match the heat to your family’s palette.

Cooling Curries:

• Cucumber: Sliced or diced cucumber is a cooling and refreshing accompaniment to curry as cucumber’s high water content provides much needed relief from some of those hotter curries.
• Yoghurt: Yoghurt should be a stable side dish with any hot curry as yoghurt is proven to help cool down your mouth and soothe inflammation. Look for plain, natural yoghurt without flavour or artificial sweeteners.
• Banana: Banana is sweet and soft and helps to soothe the mouth and throat while eating a hot curry. Banana also enhances and compliments the savoury flavours in curry.
• Milk: If your mouthful of curry was hotter than you expected, skip the water and reach for a glass of milk. The proteins in milk soothe inflammation while water, or alcohol will only worsen the burn.
• Raita: Raita is a delicious cooling partner to curry. Make a simple raita using a cup of thick, natural yoghurt, 1 peeled and grated Lebanese cucumber, 1 teaspoon ground cumin, 2 tablespoons finely chopped mint and salt and pepper to taste.

Dialling up the heat:

• Chilli gives curry its heat and can be used whole, crushed, dried or in powders or sauces. Adding more chilli to your curry recipe will result in a hotter flavour.
• Generally, the smaller they are, the hotter the flavour, and many recipes will call for specific types or colours of chilli.
• The heat level of fresh chillies is reduced somewhat with the length of cooking so add them earlier if you like it milder and later if you prefer it hotter.
• Fresh whole and sliced chillies offer the most heat once bitten into, so sprinkle and stir in fresh chillies until you reach the desired heat.
• As a rule red fresh fruit are two or three times hotter than green fruit, and dried pods are up to ten times hotter than fresh pods.
• The seeds and white pith of a chilli are the hottest part, so remove them if you don't want your dish to be too fiery.