Tis the season for making yummy, fresh salsas, or clarified jalapeno butter for corn-on-the-cob! De-lish! Last weekend I was making another dish requiring just a bit of diced jalapeno—Crab Avocado Tostadas with Chipolte Crema (so good…). Anywho, smarty-pants C here was all careful-like about avoiding the seeds after cutting the pepper. After all, the seeds carry the heat, right?!
Yeah, not so much… Turns out that I committed the worse error when I scraped out the innards of the pepper, parsing down the white, fleshy center before dicing away. You see, as I soon learned after my hand had turned bright red and started to swell as if I had just put on a boxing glove, it’s that white part that packs the punch, so to speak.
So, after throwing my hand into a Ziploc bag of ice, I called the “Ask a Nurse” line at my local hospital, and consulted the great Internet.
Here is their advice, which I followed (in order), and that did not work:
1. Ice, intermittently, for 10-minute periods.
2. Soak affected area in milk.
3. Soak affected area in lukewarm water.
4. Soak affected area in ice water.
Finally, I called the National Poison Control Center. At first, I felt sort of stupid, I mean, it’s bad enough that I brought the excruciating pain on myself, but it’s not like a took too much Nyquil.
Anywho, here is what the NPCC recommends in case of a pepper burn (and IT WORKS):
1. Go to pantry and get a large bottle of Vegetable or Corn Oil.
2. Place enough oil in bowl to cover affected area completely.
3. Soak hand in bowl for 15 minutes.
4. Go back to pantry and get a bottle of DAWN dishwashing soap.
5. Scrub affected area vigorously with a generous amount of the soap and water.
6. Rinse and repeat.
7. Repeat steps 3-7 until pain subsides.
It turns out that the oil draws the oil from the pepper (the source of the burn) out of your skin and the washing with Dawn (designed to ‘fight grease’) will break up the oil and wash it off the skin.
Works brilliantly. Hope I never need it again!
That is all.
