Peppers on your fingers? Stumbled on a trick....

Tonight I prepared an enormous batch of chile sauce using dried chiles. It was a varied assortment of southwest, medium/mild chile (cascavel, ancho, hatch, and pasilla). The darker ones tend to be quite sticky, so the spicy pepper sticks to your fingers, and under your fingernails, badly. Usually, i am left just having to suffer through the occasional eye itch where i forget to not scratch my eyes, and the subsequent 20 minutes of burn.

Tonight i decided to try something: butter. I washed my hands (they were extra sticky this time due to the quantity i did) with regular Dawn. then i grabbed a few tblsp of butter, and used it just like the grease remover stuff you get in a garage, scrubbing hard (especially under the nails). Repeated, then washed my hands with Dawn again to get rid of any leftover butter.

Worked really, really well. I can scratch my eyes without any signs of burning.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

i would wager a guess its the milk product in the butter, it acts like a neutralizer for the spicy. next time try sour cream, always worked for me

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan
The eye burn is bad but it's even worse when you go pee, if you're a male that is. My buddy ate some habenero peppers and went to the restroom after. It didn't cross his mind to wash his hands after eating them. He said it burned.
The butter is a great idea. It makes sense, considering that it's a milk product and milk is used to take the burn out of your mouth.

Is it the dairy specifically or something about the lipids in the fat?

Ah-ha! My husband says the lipids in the milk surround the capsaicin and bind and coat it, so that's why the butter works. Theoretically, you could use any sort of grease or fatty substance and achieve similar results.

The reason i chose to use butter is because greasy cheddar or colby cuts the fire of jalapeno really well, and makes an otherwise hot jalapeno seem almost bland.

I've heard about milk, but figured the greasy milk product of butter would at least help save my poor, wretched soul in the middle of the night when my eye itched.

I've noticed that avocado can soak a decent amount of heat, but it's a fatty fruit.

Use mayonnaise. Just get a glob of it on your hands and use it like hand wash. Been doing it for years, the fat and acid combined will eat that stuff off real quick.

It doesn't smell too great though when your hands warm it up and you rinse it in the sink. But it even out performs butter and vegetable oil of getting sticky and spicy stuff off your hands.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan
Grass hopper.............don't eat jalapeno potato chips and then scratch eye. The cleaner you speak of in the garage is called Goop. It rocks!!

a reply to: Tarzan the apeman.

Flaming Hot Cheetos....especially the "Atomic" ones.

It'll make you never want to touch your face again.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

I am going to have to try this.

I was making hot sauce last month with the peppers from my garden and realized I had not gotten all the capsicum off when I went to take a leak.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

TOday the Gods have smiled upon me.

My wife brought me some gloves home from work. With how often im cutting peppers, i should just buy a box

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

I should probably grab myself a box of food service gloves as well. They come in handy for other types of messy prep work as well.

Husband tends to use rubber gloves when working with chilis to avoid the issue in the first place.

I haven't gone there yet, but we don't usually work with much that is spicier than Serrano or Thai chili.

originally posted by: ketsuko
Husband tends to use rubber gloves when working with chilis to avoid the issue in the first place.

I haven't gone there yet, but we don't usually work with much that is spicier than Serrano or Thai chili.

Even poblano's....mess your eyes up real quick. Not as bad as cayenne, though.