When it comes to the severity of cooking odors left behind in the air and surfaces of your home, there are several different elements that will affect this odor issue. The size of your home or apartment is something that can significantly impact the strength of odors left behind from food smells and cooking. Also, the specific foods that are used as ingredients in your cooking will definitely exacerbate kitchen odors lingering in the airspace of the home. What can be done to reduce cooking smells and kitchen odors from the air of your indoor environment?
In this article we are going to discuss the reasons behind kitchen odors and learn the best way to remove cooking odors from the air of your home, including through the use of an effective air purifier for kitchen odors.
Cooking Smells in Kitchen
The smells that are produced when cooking in your home can spread far and wide, and this can result in the retention of these odors in clothing, upholstery, surfaces, flooring, and even in the air that will allow for these odors to continue to spread throughout your entire home. The way that you cook the food (frying, grilling, or boiling) can be a major aspect to the smells produced from cooking, as some of these cooking methods like frying can lead to splattered grease and food that can land on different surfaces that if not properly cleaned can also contribute to cooking smells stuck in the kitchen. It may be surprising to learn how messy cooking can be and how far grease and food can travel within the area of your home.
Cooking odors will also spread from other areas of the kitchen other than the stove or pots/pans, such as the sink that holds food debris and grease in its disposal. The food and debris can get stuck in the blades of the disposal and create an odor that will be released from the sink and into the air. Also, kitchen appliances may also obtain cooking odors and be a source of the cooking smell in the home way after food has been cooked in the kitchen.
List of Smelly Foods
As we discussed earlier, there are certain foods that should be avoided in your kitchen due to the strong scent that is emitted from these ingredients while cooking. Typically, when we think about strong smelling food, we will think of ethnic food like Indian food that contains a lot of curry or dishes that contain seafood, however, the list goes much further than just these basic well-known odorous foods. Some of the most common ingredients in most meals can be some of the foulest smelling or most potent food used in the kitchen.
When it comes to the smelliest foods to cook in your kitchen, these food ingredients will include the following;
- Fatty, fried foods – like bacon, French fries, burgers, etc.
- Boiled broccoli or cabbage
- Onions and garlic
- Seafood and fish
- Curry and other spices
Best Way to Remove Cooking Odors from Home
The pursuit of eradicating cooking odors from your home may be easier said than done, as there are constantly new sources each and every day that will strengthen or re-ignite different cooking smells into the air. The structure and design of a home can play an essential role in the ability for odors to build up in the air of this space, particularly homes that were tightly built with little to no ventilation. Unfortunately, newer homes and home builders are straying away from the once popular floor plans and building methods and opting for more energy-efficient layouts that provide homeowners with lower utility bills and less energy-usage throughout the entire home. Although this may seem like a logical step in the redesigning to make homes smarter, this new design feature will tremendously impact a home’s air quality and the ability to harbor both pollutants and noxious odors within the air space of this environment.
When a home has less ventilation, the airflow will be restricted and block the inflow and outflow of stale air in the house to be replaced by fresh outdoor air – this will help to eradicate odors like cooking odors stuck lingering in the air. If you live in a newer home this may be a very common issue that you are stuck dealing with, and therefore it will be necessary to implement methods to help to remove cooking odors from the home’s air. The best way to remove cooking odors from the air of a home includes the following methods listed below!
Open Windows, Close Doors
Cooking a meal in your home will release food aroma, grease, and other debris into the environment that will spread far and wide throughout the environment of a home. One way to prohibit this rapid spreading of cooking odors in the home is by making an effort to close bedroom and bathroom doors before you cook, and opening windows to allow for fresh air to take away the kitchen odors while you are cooking.
Food odors and grease will float throughout the air and land onto soft surfaces, like fabrics that are in your bedrooms and bathrooms, creating an odorous environment in these spaces of your home. Thus, shutting your bedroom/bathroom doors will significantly help to minimize food smells from invading into these other areas in your home environment.
Use a Hood Fan
Opening windows in your home can be a great way to ventilate the environment of odors and pollutant. However, there are other additional methods that can be implemented to increase this ventilation of the air, especially while cooking. Many stovetops have hood fans and vents that can be utilized while cooking to minimize the odors and smoke that is being produced into the environment.
A kitchen hood exhaust fan hangs directly above the stove or cooktop and will help to remove airborne grease, combustion products, fumes, and odors produced from the food that is being cooked in the indoor environment. Turning this hood fan on can be a major source of help to eradicate these kitchen odors from the air.
Immediately Clean Dishes and Kitchen Counters
An odor problem that many people tend to avoid after they cook is the process of cleaning up after the cooking mess including used dishes and pots, as well as the counters and areas in the kitchen that have been exposed to food/debris/grease. This will start with wiping up the splattered food and grease on the counters and on kitchen appliances. Once that is completed, cleaning the pots and dishes used to cook and eat the food will need to be thoroughly done to help to tremendously minimize the cooking odors in the air from the food.
Light a Candle, Simmer Spices, etc.
When odors have accumulated within a home like cooking odors, a go-to method will be quick odor deodorizing solutions like lighting a candle, simmer spices, and even use deodorization products (vinegar and baking soda). Candles are a fragrant item that can be placed in a home to spread the aroma throughout the entire space, working as a masking agent to hide the scent with a fragrant scent of the candle. Additionally, some people will turn to simmering spices on the stove top to help produce a sweet-smelling odor into their home to replace or mask foul cooking odors. The spices that can be used to make the environment smell good can include cinnamon sticks, cloves, and citrus peels. Learn more about candles, particularly the potential dangers of candles!
Cooking Odor Air Purifier
The last thing that you will definitely benefit from in your home to remove odors including those from cooking will be an effective air purifier that can be constantly utilized in this indoor environment. An air purifier is a device that is designed to filter the indoor air of pollutants and noxious odors and provide clean air to this area. There are many different varieties and types of air purifiers on the market, each using specific functions and technologies to accomplish their air filtration process. These different technologies will provide specific filtration capabilities within your indoor air, whether that be to mitigate airborne particulates, chemicals, chemical odors, or noxious odors from the air. Therefore, if you are looking for an air purifier that will specifically remove odors like cooking odors from your air, it is critical to do you research before buying an air purifier for this purpose in your home.
Best Air Purifier for Food Odors
When it comes to the process of remediating and mitigating smells and odors out of your home, an often-popular solution is the use of an air purifier to purify this air and clean it of noxious and toxic odors. However, the perception that all air purifiers purify the air of odors is not necessarily accurate. When it comes to odor removal in air purifiers the go-to technology is carbon filters and filtration. A carbon air filter works by using a large surface area that is doped with chemicals to allow the material to obtain and collect a higher volume of pollutants on the media. Although this is an effective method for removing odors from the air at that given time, these filters work like sponges which increases the chances of the odors being re-released back into the air overtime once the filter becomes full. Therefore, the carbon will act counterproductively when it comes to the removal of food odors from the air.
Whereas, the EnviroKlenz Air Purifier is an air purifier that is effectively capable of containing and neutralizing odors upon contact, and thus eliminating them completely rather than storing the odors on a filter media, like carbon air filtration. EnviroKlenz utilizes a proprietary earth mineral technology that is able to contain the noxious and toxic chemicals and odors from the air and neutralize/break down these pollutants completely upon contact. Additionally, the EnviroKlenz Air Purifier also contains a second stage filtration, through the use of a hospital-grade HEPA Filter for particulate removal larger than 0.3 microns in size at a 99.99 percent efficiency.
Mobile Air System
$749.00 $699.00
✓ Patented earth mineral technology works to attack VOCs and break them down on a compound level
✓ No chemicals or masking agents
✓ Will not release any chemicals back into your environment
✓ Safer and faster at removing VOC’s than traditional carbon filters and PECO air purifiers