How to Get Rid of Smells from Common Kitchen Items

But sometimes, the smells left behind on our kitchen utensils are a little less appetizing.

To help rid your kitchen and cooking gadgets of unwanted smells, we’ve collected our tried-and-tested tips all in one place.

Have you ever noticed that your ice tastes a little funky? The culprit is the circulating air in your refrigerator and any food smells it may carry. Ice can soak up smells from both the frozen food in the freezer as well as any circulated odors from your leftovers in the fridge, and permeable materials like silicone can compound the issue.

To clean your silicone ice trays, you can bake them in a 350-degree oven for an hour (silicone can withstand temperatures of up to 500 degrees, so there is no risk of the trays melting). Once you take them out, they’ll be freshly deodorized and ready to form fragrance-free ice cubes.

We love using wooden cutting boards (and never use glass cutting boards), but the one downside to these porous kitchen tools is that they can become mildewy and retain strong odors from the food that is prepped on them.

But never fear—it is possible to thoroughly clean them of any mildew. Simply mix 1 tablespoon of unscented, liquid chlorine bleach into a gallon of water. Cover the surface of the cutting board with the solution and let it stand for a few minutes. Then, flip and repeat on the other side. Rinse the whole board with clean water and pat it dry with paper towels and then you’re done!

Reusable food storage bags are a great way to reduce your single-use plastics, but naturally, they present another issue when it comes to clean-up.

If your reusable bags are dishwasher-safe, then your troubles are over . . . but if not, you can simply soak your reusable bags for a few hours, or overnight, in equal parts white distilled vinegar and warm water, then wash and dry them as usual.

When it comes to spice grinders, small flecks of potent spices can stick around and muddy the flavors of whatever is put into them next. Luckily, there’s a simple trick to picking up every last bit of ground spice, and you won’t even need to pull out the soap or run the sink: you just need to “dry-clean” your spice grinder by blitzing raw rice into a fine powder. The rice will pick up residue and absorb excess oils.

At America’s Test Kitchen we take our sponges very seriously. They’re kitchen workhorses and are essential for keeping a safe and clean cooking environment. That’s why we have three different methods for cleaning and deodorizing your sponges, for however you prefer to keep them clean.

Method 1: Dampen your sponge and microwave it for at least 2 minutes.

Method 2: Run your sponge through your dishwasher on a setting that reaches at least 155 degrees and has a heated dry cycle (sometimes called sani-rinse, sani-wash, or sanitation cycle), preferably every time you run your dishwasher.

Method 3: Submerge your sponge in a bleach solution (¾ cup of bleach for every gallon of water) for at least 5 minutes and then rinse it thoroughly.

Unsurprisingly, one of the main sources of unsavory smells is the trash can. To ensure that your kitchen—and the rest of your home—remains free of garbage odors, you need to clean, sanitize, and disinfect your trash can. Your nose will thank you.

First, clean your trash can by taking it outside and spraying the inside with a vinegar solution: one part distilled white vinegar to four parts water. Let it sit for a few minutes, then wipe away any stuck-on material with a paper towel or a rag. Next, sanitize your trash can with water and dish soap. Let that sit for a few minutes, then pour out the soapy water into a bathtub or large sink, and dry the can with a paper towel or rag.

Finally, disinfect your trash can using a disinfectant spray or bleach solution in a spray bottle (four teaspoons of bleach per quart of room temperature water). Let it dry completely or wipe it away according to the instructions. 

Yes, you should be cleaning your dishwasher to avoid the smells of old, stuck-on bits of food that can linger in the filter. Cleaning the filter is an important step in ridding your dishwasher of those smells, but deep-cleaning the entire appliance is also key to a stink-free dishwasher. 

To do this, simply add 2 cups of distilled white vinegar in a sturdy glass or dishwasher-safe measuring cup on the bottom rack. Run the dishwasher through a complete wash cycle, using an air-dry or an energy-saving dry option. The vinegar will mix with the wash water and effectively clean the entire machine.

Important note: Don’t go overboard and do this cleaning cycle more than once per month. Vinegar is an acid, and too much can damage your dishwasher, even if its interior is made of stainless steel. And definitely don’t be tempted to use chlorine bleach, which will damage the machine.

OK, so this might not be an item in your kitchen, but it is a common problem. Cooking with garlic is pretty much guaranteed to produce flavorful, delicious-smelling food, but we don’t love when our fingers turn out smelling the same after handling minced or smashed cloves. 

There is an incredibly simple (and fairly unexpected) solution, though. Thanks to a little bit of science, it turns out that rubbing your garlicky hands on stainless steel can help with the smell. It’s thought that the sulfur-containing molecules that cling so persistently (and cause that garlicky smell) to skin will happily transfer themselves to steel. Those molecules can then be easily washed away from the steel with soap and water. There’s even a stainless-steel bar of “soap” designed to do just that. 

Have you ever regretted reheating a fishy meal in the microwave due to the powerful smell that it can leave behind? There’s a simple solution to this odor as well, and it probably won’t surprise you as it’s featured in many of our previous tips: it’s vinegar.

You can use any kind of vinegar for this: distilled white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, or any type you have around (but no need to waste anything fancy). In a small saucepan, mix half a cup of vinegar with a cup of water, and let it simmer on low to medium heat for 10 to 15 minutes. The acetic acid in the vinegar will quickly work to neutralize the odors in your kitchen. Voilà!