When you take a bite of something spicy, it doesn’t take long for the sensation of heat to bloom, right? While we think of “spicy” as a flavor, it’s actually not. There’s no specific taste that is spicy. Spicy foods create the feeling of heat, which our nerve cells interact with. This interaction is caused by a chemical in the spicy food called capsaicin, and as it turns out, capsaicin is far more than just something that sets your tongue on fire.
In fact, capsaicin extract is used for a wide variety of medical and edible purposes, as well as in pepper spray, used for self-defense. Scientists are currently using capsaicin in trials as a pain reliever, cancer fighter, digestive aid, and much more. But it’s entirely possible (and useful!) to extract capsaicin at home. Here’s why you’d want to, and how to do it.
The Science Stuff
Any time you’re dealing with something as specific as extracting a compound from a food, you might want to take the time to understand what it is you’re extracting. Capsaicin is the component in chili peppers that makes them spicy. Not all ingredients that we call pepper have capsaicin. For example, black pepper gets its heat from a molecule called piperine. And certain peppers, like bell peppers, have no capsaicin at all.
If you want to understand how hot a pepper is, you can rate the capsaicin concentration of the pepper using a measurement called a Scoville unit. The higher on the Scoville scale a pepper falls, the more spice you’ll taste. The highest, if you were wondering, is the ghost chili, which rates over 1,000,000 Scoville units. Jalapeños fall near the bottom of the scale. This can help illustrate just how potent capsaicin is in high concentrations; even a pepper that most casual spice lovers can find pretty fiery has barely any capsaicin in comparison to the hottest pepper.
Pure capsaicin extract is colorless, odorless, and hydrophobic. (In fact, capsaicin is hydrophobic within the pepper as well, which means that when you drink water to try to cool your mouth down, you aren’t doing much. The capsaicin just repels the water, instead of being soothed by it.) It can be a crystalline substance or a waxy substance.
Why Extract Capsaicin?
Capsaicin has quite a few uses for the home chef and DIY healer. Because my first love is spicy food, let’s start with the kitchen uses for capsaicin extract.
The most obvious reason that you might want capsaicin in your kitchen is to add heat to a dish without changing its overall flavor. A great example of this practice is in commercial hot sauces. Some sauces are “designer” sauces with very interesting, specific flavors that would be masked by adding peppers. Instead, the producers add capsaicin to add the kick that everyone expects, while maintaining the integrity of their sauce.
When capsaicin comes into contact with the nerve cells in the mouth, and the brain gets a signal that something is very hot, the first thing that happens to the body is a rush of feel-good endorphins, dopamine, and natural painkillers. This is the brain’s way of protecting the body, but over time, we’ve come to associate this happy, even “buzzed” feeling with the spicy food itself rather than the brain’s reaction to the food. So, another reason that people add capsaicin to food is to experience that pleasant chemical cocktail. Some people have even experienced hallucinogenic effects, similar to the effects of recreational drugs, when eating capsaicin.
Capsaicin Medical Uses
The medical uses of capsaicin are significantly more complex than the edible uses. Capsaicin is often used as an analgesic in ointments for pain, nasal sprays, and pain-relieving dermal patches. Most of these products have a capsaicin concentration of less than 0.1%, far less than even the sweetest pepper. Doctors have found that capsaicin can effectively relieve pain in patients suffering from arthritis, backaches, headaches, sprains, strains, psoriasis, and more. The key, though, is that for medical purposes, capsaicin is a topical treatment only.
Capsaicin is also used to reduce symptoms of conditions like shingles, and there is ongoing research into the impact capsaicin might have on diabetes. For home use, capsaicin is an excellent pain reliever and anti-inflammatory, similar to taking medications like ibuprofen. The topical capsaicin cream should be applied with gloves on your hands, and you should be careful to not get the cream anywhere near your eyes, nose, or mouth. Once you feel the “heat” on your skin, you should remove the cream, as your cells have already reacted with the capsaicin as much as they are going to.
At that point, pain signals in the brain cause the rush of pain blockers and endorphins, and the anti-inflammatory effects of capsaicin kick in. Patients using this product typically enjoy several hours of intense pain relief, and a lasting feeling of relief as swelling is reduced.
Finally, the medical community has also done research into using capsaicin as a drug abuse deterrent. Certain extended-release tablets are often crushed and snorted for recreational drug use. Some professors and medical doctors have suggested using capsaicin, which would not affect a legitimate medication user, as an ingredient in the drug, so that when crushed and snorted, it would cause immense pain. Perhaps fortunately for those who might overdose on capsaicin, there’s an easy way around this by using a cold water extraction to get rid of the capsaicin, so the suggestions have never gone anywhere seriously.
Capsaicin and Other Uses
Finally, capsaicin has two important uses outside of food and medicine. The first is as an active ingredient in pepper spray. This self-defense and riot control spray is meant to be sprayed in the eyes or the nose, causing a very painful reaction. Remember that the hottest chili pepper in the world has a Scoville unit rating of over 1,000,000? Common civilian pepper spray rates around double that, while law enforcement officers use pepper spray that rates around 5,300,000 Scoville units.
You would have to stuff five of the hottest chili peppers known to man in your mouth for the same effect, and even then, it wouldn’t be the same – the saliva in your mouth would dilute the capsaicin. It’s safe to say that law enforcement grade pepper spray is just about as effective as bullets in stopping bad guys. In extremely large quantities, this level of pepper spray can even be deadly. If a person sprayed with pepper spray begins having trouble breathing, starts convulsing, or their skin starts turning blue, they’ve had an overdose. But don’t be alarmed – the amount of capsaicin needed to kill even a child is astronomically higher than the amount of capsaicin in any pepper you could eat.
Capsaicin is also used as a pest deterrent, keeping deer, rabbits, voles, squirrels, bear, insects, and unfriendly dogs far away from your property. Technically all you need to do is grind up some dried chili pods into some birdseed, and that will keep away rodents. Don’t worry about the birds – only mammals and insects are affected by the negative properties of capsaicin. Since 1962, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been using capsaicin as a top ingredient in pesticide.
Extraction Method
Now we get to the good stuff: how to extract capsaicin. This is a four-part system that requires several days to complete, so be sure to give yourself time. Any time you are performing any of these steps, be sure you are wearing gloves, a face mask, and goggles.
Start with dried chili peppers, and grind or chop them in a food processor until the pieces are very small. Then fill a canning jar with the pepper pieces, leaving about an inch at the top. You may need to tap the jar or shake the pieces down to get more in there. The more pepper pieces you add, the stronger your concentration will be.
Pour a grain alcohol, such as Everclear, into the jar very slowly, letting the air rise to the top. Tap the bottom of the jar as needed to get out all the air. Do this until the alcohol completely fills the jar, with no air left. Then tightly seal the jar and set is aside, out of sunlight and heat, for about three days. During those three days, give the jar a good shake twice a day.
By the time day three rolls around, you should have a dark red liquid inside the jar. Now it is time to remove the alcohol from the bits of dried pepper. The easiest way to do this is to use a fruit strainer, held over the mouth of a bottle while you carefully pour the liquid into the new bottle. You may also be able to use cheesecloth, however.
After you’ve gotten all of the liquid into the new bottle, discard the pepper bits and get ready for the second filter. This time, you’ll be pouring the alcohol back into its original jar. Put a funnel, lined with a coffee filter, over the mouth of the old jar, and pour the liquid back into this jar. This helps remove any tiny particles that didn’t get removed in the first filter.
At this point, you should have a liquid that is perfectly clear, and red in color. Finally, it’s time to extract the concentrated capsaicin. Set up a double boiler, either on your stove, or on a hot plate, and bring the temperature of the stove or hot plate up to about 185 degrees Fahrenheit. Fill the double broiler with water in the bottom half, and be sure you are in a well-ventilated room. You could also do this outside for better safety.
Once the temperature of the heating element is steady, pour the filtered liquid into the top of the double broiler. Allow this to cook down until you have less than half of the original volume of liquid. Then remove the double boiler from the heating element and pour the liquid into a pie plate or some other shallow dish. Glass is best.
Allow the alcohol to finish evaporating on its own. You will start to see a thick substance that appears sticky, like molasses. This is the concentrated capsaicin. Use a scraper to transfer this substance to a vial, and be sure to close it up very tightly.
That’s it! You have concentrated capsaicin. Store it at room temperature away from sunlight, and you can use it for pain relief, cooking, and more.
Remember when you are choosing which chili pepper to use for this process that the higher the Scoville unit, the more capsaicin is present in the pepper. Probably the most commercially available pepper with the highest capsaicin concentration is the habanero, which rates anywhere from 300,000 to 150,000 Scoville units. Go for orange habaneros over red habaneros.
The Verdict
As you can see, extracting capsaicin from chili peppers isn’t really hard – it’s just time consuming. Once you’ve done it one time, you’ll be able to get through all the steps very quickly. If you often find yourself wishing you had a way to spice up delicate flavors, or you want to try your hand at some DIY pain relief, then learning to extract capsaicin from chili peppers may be a great skill to pursue.
Don’t forget that you can also use it to keep your garden safe, or even for self-defense as a last measure. The most important thing, though, is that capsaicin is still being studied for all of the amazing capabilities it has. One day soon, we may come to learn that capsaicin can cure diabetes, fight cancer, and put an end to digestive disorders that have plagued us for centuries. The sooner you start using capsaicin in your diet and home health remedies, the sooner you might see a difference yourself.
And if nothing else, it’ll still be tasty. And that is something we can all agree is a great benefit indeed.