I Just Discovered a $1 Trick to Getting Rid of Food Smells in the Kitchen (It’s Hiding in Your Pantry!)

My husband loves to cook, and I love to bake. That means delicious smells emanate from our kitchen, along with the occasional odorous misstep when we’re trying out a new recipe.

While I love a sweet-smelling candle, I’ve found they only mask lingering kitchen smells. Turning on the hood vent helps, but ours is loud and annoying. To really clear the air in the kitchen, I reach for the white distilled vinegar — a trick I learned on Apartment Therapy.

I’ve often written about the many uses of vinegar for cleaning and freshening other household surfaces. But those hacks often involve filling a spray bottle or at least dampening a microfiber cloth with vinegar, while this one is far easier. In fact, it takes about as long to prep as it does to light my favorite vanilla candle.

1. Fill a small bowl with white distilled vinegar.
2. Place it on the countertop by the stove for a few hours until the odors subside.

Vinegar contains acetic acid, which neutralizes alkaline odors in the air. Soon enough, anything from garlic and oil to chocolaty brownies will be erased from the air. It definitely beats burning a syrupy sweet candle for so long. Because I have expensive taste in candles — Diptyque Baies, anyone? — I’m thrilled that vinegar offers a cheap-yet-effective alternative to rid my kitchen of food smells. 

Some home chefs will keep a bowl of vinegar out while cooking as a preemptive measure. I find that the vinegar is pungent enough to get in the way of what I want to smell during the meal or dessert prep, so I wait until cleanup later. 

For really harsh odors, pour some vinegar in a small saucepan and set it to boil on the stove, and the vinegary steam will permeate the air to make quicker work of removing odors. If that’s too much energy, you can simply leave out the bowl overnight.

Yes, my kitchen will smell like vinegar for a while as the scents of Brussels sprouts, seafood, and the occasional burnt chocolate chip cookie subside. There is a window over the sink in our kitchen, so I simply crank it open for some ventilation. 

Once I’m satisfied that the kitchen smells are gone, I’ll dump the bowl of vinegar. Typically even the smell of vinegar will subside by this point, although now is when I usually bring out that candle as a treat.

Buy: White Distilled Vinegar, $0.89