Cooking with garlic without smelling like it

I can’t remember life before garlic.

As a kid in the ’80s, I peeled countless cloves as indentured child labor during my mom’s blowout salsa canning sessions. Then bam! Here comes Emeril in the ’90s throwing fistfuls of the stuff in everything in my earliest Food Network memories.

The first time I cooked for my girlfriend she requested “pasta with too much garlic.” It was love at first bite.

But all those bulbs come with an aggressively aromatic side effect, as every cook knows. Garlic stink lingers on just about everything it touches. The stench is so legendary it’s even given rise to a few timely jokes along the lines of: “How do you avoid the coronavirus? Eat lots of garlic. It won’t do anything against the virus, but it will keep other people away.”

Fortunately, it’s not too hard to get the garlic smell off of your hands. Here are three methods that actually work.

The easiest — and most science-y of the three — won’t require buying anything and is surprisingly effective.

So a funny thing happens when you chop a heap of garlic. Garlic contains sulfur-laden molecules that stick to your skin. Water only helps transform those molecules to sulfuric acid — that’s partly why your fingers will sometimes smell even worse after a quick rinse.

Stainless steel, magically enough, can bond with those sulfuric elements. There are soap bar-shaped blocks of stainless steel on the market designed for the purpose, but I’m cheap. I just rub my stinky fingers on the stainless walls of my sink basin for a few seconds while the water is running. In theory, you could use a stainless spoon or other tool, although I haven’t attempted it.

Another quick fix — and an option if your sink is ceramic or some other material — is lemon juice.

Acid (vinegar will have the same effect) neutralizes sulfur stink. If you have a juiced lemon husk or two left over after making dinner, just rub the juicy side of that sucker into your skin before washing with soap.

You can also use lemons in this manner to deodorize that swanky butcher block or cutting board. Just toss a pinch of salt on the surface if you have a particularly grimy surface after cutting something like fish.

Here’s the downside to lemon (or vinegar): If you have any slices or nicks on your digits, it’s gonna hurt. I can forget this option in the winter when my hands are constantly chapped and cracked.

The last option is by far the messiest, albeit fairly effective: Toothpaste. Squeeze a blob onto your hands and scrub your hands for a few seconds, then wash with soap and water. It’s not pretty, but it works if you have painful splits on your hands and an improbable absence of stainless steel in your kitchen.

Baking soda also works. So if the idea of scrubbing your digits with toothpaste grosses you out, just mix a little baking soda with water and scrub away.

To get that garlic stink off your hands, chose one of several methods.

A stainless steel soap works, as does a sink made of the same material.