Stopping The Burn

Hubby Tony often uses fresh jalapeno in his dinner recipes. The other day he bought a package that contained eight peppers. He used one in his dish, then cut the extra ones in half, de-seeded them, and put them on a cookie sheet in the freezer.

When they were frozen I dumped the pepper pieces in a Ziploc bag for long term storage. I don't remember touching the peppers, but I must have. I also don't remember touching my face, but I must have, because fifteen minutes later I felt a sharp, burning sensation right next to my left eye and realized I must have gotten pepper juice there.

I carefully splashed water on it, but that didn't help. Then I remembered that if I had ingested the hot pepper drinking water wouldn't help, so I probably needed to find a different solution. Google didn't have any information about pepper juice on your face, so I turned to a WikiHow article entitled How to Get Jalapeno Off Your Hands.  

The article had three suggestions. Two of them (rinsing with alcohol or a diluted bleach solution and using a mixture of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide) sounded like they could be problematic close to my eye. But the third one said the jalapeno capsaicin could be dissolved with olive oil. I got the bottle of EVOO out of the pantry and carefully rubbed a couple of drops on the offending spot. It took a couple of seconds, but the burn disappeared.

The last step was to wash the oil off with soap and water. Although the article suggested that dish detergent would do a better job of cutting the grease I went with a milder face soap. It took two cycles of washing and rinsing before my skin didn't feel oily any more.  And more importantly, it didn't burn.

Five years ago: Good Grief!