Teresa’s soup is too spicy. Below is Chef Adam’s response. Don’t hesitate to give us a call while fixing up your soup.

According to my experience, over-seasoning and over-spicing is the single most common problem that occasionally faces all home cooks and professional chefs alike. There are many ways a dish or a recipe may become over-seasoned, but there are also a few tricks to deal with it.

The important thing to remember is that you do NOT need to throw away your soup and start over. Begin by placing a small amount of the peppery soup in a small pot. To this, add a small amount of sugar and heat. Taste the soup and see if the flavor is more appealing to you. If there is no noticable difference, add a bit more sugar and taste. It’s possible that the sugar flavor will not do the trick - let’s then try adding more fat. To a fresh small amount of peppery soup, drizzle some olive oil in and taste. If either of these additions brings your small tasting soup to where you want - then the same can be done for the pot. Remember to begin with small amounts of flavor additions and taste as you season.

It’s possible the two “tricks” above do not result in the soup you want. Then, consider making more of the recipe, minus the pepper, to bring the spice back down to something more normal. You may also consider keeping two separate versions on hand, the peppery and the not-so-peppery, for folks who like it hot.

Short of repeating the recipe from scratch, you might consider simply adding more of the elements that can absorb some of that flavor, namely starches, meat, vegetable and/or broth. Cut straight to the heart of the issue - dilute the flavor into more flavor-carriers. You indeed need to add more of the other spices in the recipe in order to remain true to the desired taste.

Which leads to another option: disguise the pepper flavor with other aromatics - fresh or dried herbs, whathaveyou. This option only works with mildly over-seasoned dishes, however.

When you get your flavor back to what you had originally wanted, you will likely now have more soup than you had originally intended. That’s okay - soup freezes well, and my guess is it’s a great soup, considering the time and care both you and your husband have taken to try to find a way to save it. I hope I have been helpful, Teresa, and have fun cooking!