Whether you’re an experienced chef at a high-end restaurant or a novice home cook, there’s one thing that unites us all—bad kitchen smells. Due to the volatility of fresh ingredients, they’re pretty much unavoidable, but there are some things you can do to manage them.
Food Editor Francesca Zani walks us through a few of her favorite hacks featuring common household ingredients like baking soda, citrus, and more.
Hack #1: How To Banish Garlic Smell From Your Hands
There are a lot of overly "chef-y" tricks to avoid getting garlic on your hands but for the rest of us? It’s hard to avoid, and once it’s on there, you could be smelling that garlic for hours. Washing your hands with just soap won’t do the trick, so try adding a stainless steel spoon to the mix. When you're running your soapy hands under warm water, rub them on the spoon as well. The sulfuric (i.e., smelly) compounds will bind to the stainless steel and leave your hands free of them. This trick should work for things like fish and onions, too—give it a try!
Hack #2: Instantly Neutralize Garbage Odor
We’ve all been here—you’re in the middle of cooking, you open your trash to throw away some vegetable peels or meat packaging, and you get that stinky whiff of garbage. You know the one? The one that permeates the area around the garbage can and can only be solved by taking the trash out immediately… or is that the only solve?
When you’ve got dinner cooking and just can’t take the trash out right away, try sprinkling baking soda over the top (and trying not to open it again for the duration of your meal). It’ll neutralize the odors until you’ve got time to deal with it.
Hack #3: Naturally Freshen Your Sink
We’ll say it—there are too many cleaning product options! Sometimes, the best thing to do is to keep it simple, and this goes double for your kitchen sink. Because you’ve already been cleaning your dishes in there, it often just needs a solid scrub down, and you can use ingredients you’ve likely already got on hand to do it. Simply mix a little vinegar and lemon juice together in equal parts, and put it into an empty spray bottle. We like to do this every time we clean to guarantee the lemon juice is at its most potent. BTW, this is a great use for bottled lemon juice that’s nearing its expiration date.
Hack #4: How To Get Rid Of Extra-Strong Fridge Odors
We all know the trick of keeping an open box of baking soda in the fridge to absorb odors, right? It definitely works unless you’ve got a really powerful smell going on in there. If the single open box isn’t doing the trick, you can give it a little added oomph by combining it with naturally antibacterial citrus. Simply slice a lemon, place the slices on a plate that will fit into your fridge, sprinkle the slices with baking soda and salt, and let it sit in your fridge overnight.
Hack #5: Fill Your Kitchen With Delicious Smells (No Candles Needed)
Having a nice-smelling kitchen doesn't just have to be about covering and removing bad odors! If you love the scent of cleaning products and air fresheners but are looking for something more natural, we’ve got you too. Simmering a pot of aromatics on the stove can fill your home with a pleasant smell for way less than the cost of most candles. They’re super versatile, too. In the video above, Francesca went with a few tea bags, some dried spices like star anise and cinnamon, and some lemon slices, but feel free to mix it up.
