Several things you can try:

Add more of the other ingredients (i.e. beans, meat)
Add a little sugar
The peppers should mellow some as they cook, but maybe not enough.
You can serve with sour cream.

Good luck.
Deanna

Deanna, Good idea on the sour cream,,forgot about that! In the recipe it had some brown sugar so I guess I'll add some more. It's already got 1# of sweet Italian sausage and 1+# of finely chopped stew meat so I think that's all I can do there. It's got 3 cans of beans in it. I'll go with the sugar and cut it down with the sour cream. Thanks for the suggestions. I just couldn't see the forest for the trees.

How can you tell when a recipe is going to be too hot and adjust BEFORE you make it? I just wanted to try a different recipe that my made up one for variety. I was really looking for one without beans and I had some good chili at a class potluck, but the guy who made it didn't take my hint twice when I said how good it was and "If it's not a family secret...". Thx!

Grate some cheese on it. Cheese is good with chile, and also helps to tone down or muffle the hotness of it. Cheddar or Monterray Jack are good choices. The sour cream is a good idea, too.

Sally

Pack it up and ship it to me! I love spicy chili! Seriously, you can dillute it by splitting it up into a couple of different pots and adding extra meat/tomatoes etc. until it is to your liking. Then you can freeze the extra portion for another time if it is too much to eat at one time. Good luck!

Duane

I certainly wouldn't add more sugar. Nothing worse than a sweet chili, especially when you are expecting something savory. I think the only way to really tone it down is to make another half batch, minus the "heat" and add it to the pot of hot chili. That should tone it down for you.

Ann

Honestly, I would try to find the offenders.
Good luck.
Jo

If you pull those bits of chili out....you still have the heat they left behind.
I agree with those who say add mor "stuff"...meat beans...tomatoes broth....whatever you originally used....but leave out any extra chilis!!
Linda C

would adding a cheese cloth of rice to absorb the spicy sauce help? You could yank it after the rice blooms :) and then add extra non spicy ingredients to cut the remaining spice.

I made chili yesterday that was too spicy, for my husband not for me. I threw half a glass of white wine in and for some reason it worked. It didn't make it sweeter, it just mellowed both the mild chili pepper flavor and the heat.

Here's the moral of the story: when you are working with a new recipe, don't add the hot stuff until you can taste the base, and then add in small amounts.

Cooking hot stuff requires that you know the heat-tolerance of your audience before adding the heat, or add it in small batches to taste as the dish progresses.

I'd toss in a can of tomato sauce, too. The more volume in the pot, the more dilute the heat. (I hope!)

I served "to hot" chili over rice that helped with sour cream on top.

for the future because you probably ate it already...I'd add a can of beer.

This happens to me often. I have a shake in my right arm which will go off at just the wrong moment- like when the red pepper is being added. Someday I'll learn to measure out a small amount instead of using the bottle.
Anyway. Here's the only true way to save your recipe that I know of. Divide and conquer. Take out one half of the chili and freeze it. Start over with the remaining half using your ingredients but leave out anything with heat.
I don't like the cheese idea since it actually tends to intensify the heat while adding another flavor, the sour cream is nice but again you have another flavor and will need to use so much to cut the heat that you will have pink chili. Brown sugar, oh my, did it really say to use that in the recipe?
Good luck and welcome to the club.

Here is a link that might be useful: traveling and cooking with grandpa

Thank you all! Here is how it turned out. I did add one tsp of brown sugar. The recipe already had a can of beer in it and coffee if you can believe that!

When all was said and done, and maybe I just got used to it after I tasted for the umpteenth time, it was good! I did cut mine a bit by adding sour cream. My husband who likes the blandest food of all, really liked it. My son complained. It ends with a smoky note to it. So tonight I will cook a pot of plain rice and serve it that way. It's tolerable so depending on how much I have left tonight, I'll either cut it in 1/2 as suggested or just finish it up. Next time, I won't do the full amount of chili powder or the amount of cayenne pepper called for and probably go with, as one suggested,,,just adding in the "peppers" a little at a time.

How long does it take for the pepper to really show it's true heat? For example should I expect it to be hotter today? Thank you all!

I've tried all methods and the ONLY two methods that work and won't ruin your chili:

If you wanna eat it now: Just add the juice from 1/2 of a lime to approx. 4-6 cups of chili or any bean concoction; I just did this with my black-eyed peas and ham hock stew and it worked like a charm. The natural acid of limes (or lemon) really work on neutralizing the heat of the capsicum oil and I feel that it brightens the flavor as well.

If you wanna eat it another day: Freeze it into 2-4 separate batches and add one or more of these to a new batch of the same chili but without hot peppers to balance it.

The award winning chili that I make has two different chili powders, fresh serrano peppers, pickled jalapeno peppers, chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, diced tomatoes with green chiles, medium chili beans and a small amount of chocolate w/ chilies. When it is fresh off the stove, it is too hot for me to enjoy, but after sitting in the fridge overnight, and being heated back up in a crockpot, the heat profile really broadens and mellows.

Note: It won second place in the hunt club chili cookoff and first place at a chili cookoff among a small group of co-workers, but I did get a ribbon from one and a small cheesy plastic trophy from the other, so "award winning chili" :-)