Smelly hands

I realise this question can probably be answered by any average eight year old. Unfortunately, I spent most of my youth practicing the piano so got out of doing most household chores (despite my parents best efforts, I never did become the next Beethoven, but that's another matter entirely), which means I didn't learn to cook from my mother and so far as an adult haven't really found much need for it.

Lately I've been trying to change this and have actually surprised myself with the positive results. My problem is no matter how often I wash my hands, the smell of garlic, onions and chillis in particular permeates my skin and makes my hands stink for the better part of the next day. Not to mention the chilli oil left on hands can really irritate if you happen to come in contact with the more sensitive areas of the body.

I know many of you cook and you never stink, so what's your secret? Is there some well-kept handwashing secret that I've missed out on due to my misguided childhood? Is there any particular brand of soap that works better than others?

Lemon juice and/or toothpaste (minty Crest worked the best).

Yum you have to let me sniff your hands next time I see you.

yes, leave it to kza to give some heplful advice.

if i do get in contact with chillis, i dip my hands in vinegar. what about baking soda? that somehow rings a bell.

Here's a tick to peeling and cutting garlic without ever having to touch the smelly cloves:

Keep your garlic in the fridge. When it's time to slice and dice, put the clove on your cutting board. Then with a wide cutting knife, slightly crush the clove with the fatty part of the knife. Since the garlic is cold, it will slide right out of it's skin and you have a nice clove to start cutting. After slightly crushing it, sometimes you need to use the end of the knife to pry it out. Once you have a the bear clove on your board, use the fatty knife to slice it by applying pressure with your left hand over the knife and the right hand for the slicing action. If done properly, you never have touch the smelly beasts...

I rub parsely (fresh) on my hands if they smell garlicky.

Sorry my area of expertise is the other way around, making things smellier. You want to stink anything up, im your man!

please share!

Now Now then...

Masturbation makes you go blind !!!
So its a good thing not being able to ...

I see people wearing those one-time gloves you can get at the pharmacy. Probably it's for hygiene mostly, but also keeps the smell off your hands.

Or you could do what the muslims do, save one hand for clean things and one hand for dirty things.

This is the correct answer.

Ever thought about eating out and/or getting someone to do it for you? I'd offer, but I don't want to stink of fish etc..

We used to keep this in some of the kitchens that I worked in (especially those specializing in fish).


Just go to your nearest autoparts store and pick some up.

Lemon as eurovol mentioned before is a good way to keep the garlic smell out of your hands. Also if you wash your hands immediately after each clove that you chop it is harder for the smell to stick to the skin.

I discovered another downside of cooking with fresh chilli lastnight.
It really really hurts to remove your contact lenses after you've been chopping chilli...burny eyeballs from hell

lemon juice works for me.
when you cook curry, it also helps getting rid of any tamarid staines

That's what I've been doing so far but it gets a bit hard on the waist and the wallet after a while.
I can't believe I'm saying this but I'm actually really enjoying the cooking. I had no idea it could be so much fun.

and with cold water!

for cuttling chillies - always wash your hands in cold water first to get rid of most of the chilli residue then in warm soapy.

agree with others about lemons for other malodours.

many liquid handwashes do have malodour counteractant properites - I should know - they come from the company I work for - just look on the labels.

@ ER - so the guacamole was just the start then??

I've made little things before but generally my duty in the kitchen has been limited to "helping" (peeling potatoes, grating cheese, cutting mushrooms, mashing avocadoes) anything that didn't really involve being a part of the cooking process or using any sort of imagination.

I wouldn't recommend using that sort of stuff all the time though, they're powerful degreasers which will suck all the natural oils out of your skin and leave you with horrible dry skin.

When you leave the restaurant and head to a bar to pick up girls, you definitely don't want to be stinking. They work and you can always use hand lotion afterwards.

I used to use Tide powder to get the onion smell out of my hands after doing the prep work at a restaurant. We used to cut up 10pound bags everyday for the burgers.

Whatwhatwhat? Turning chillies into seafood?
I, too, recommend the cold water first then soapy warm. I also found pre-cut garlic in oil at Penny but cannot provide a pic, sorry.

My sister in law gave me some weird stainless steel egg last year, which is meant to somehow take smells away from your hands if you rub it a bit. I thought this had to be complete load of cobblers, but it seems to make a difference. Can probably pick one up in the cooking department of some big shop or other.

You can sort out garlic without touching it alot too - give the clove a little whack with tha back of a blade to loosen the skin and peel it without getting hardly any of the garlicy essential oil on your fingers, then pop the peeled clove on a board, give it a good pinch of salt, and use the old abrasive quality of the salt with the back of a blade to crush it on the board. You wanna sort of run the blade on the board at an angle, like shaving, and squish the garlic against it. Then you can life it off the board with the same blade, and wipe it into whatever you are doing. For roughly chopped garlic, peel a whole head of garlic cloves, then chop them all at once - the quantity will let you get away with it, does not really work with one or two cloves. Holding the blade in your right hand, hold the tip against the board with your left, and slice downward in a guillotine fashion. Moving the mass of chopped garlic about into a pile as it gets more chopped, and chopping through it repeatedly a few times will get anice pile of chopped up garlic, which you can mix with decent olive oil and a bit of salt, and whack in a jar in the fridge. You can do this without touching the garlic much atall, and even if you do, at least its only one time, and you have loads of garlic sorted.

by garlic/ginger/chilli paste from an indian shop. no fuss and no smelly fingers.

For peeling garlic I have one of these, dead handy. Put the garlic in, roll the tube a few times, presto. I think I bought it at Walmart but any well-stocked Tengelmann should have them too.
This garlic peeler, however, is awesome. Maybe we can take up a collection and share the peeled garlic among all home-cooking TTers.

You don't need to go to an Indian shop, EDEKA sell it.

me has garlic rubbing tube and it works great. Then I use a garlic press to smash them garlics to pieces.

This is indeed the solution of preference for me. No putting hands into other agents you have to prepare in advance, no expensive BS soap that does the same. Just buy the egg and bye the smell. Here's an explanation for how it works, though seems to me a bit sucked out of the thumb.


I find these things ridiculously useful. Roll-smash-knack and the garlic is out.

I got mine with one of these Knoblauchschneider from Genius. Easily cuts garlic to tiny cubes without pressing out the juices, which means when frying the garlic, more of the taste remains and less gets burnt. A tad expensive (~20 EUR for a set that includes the rubber tube peeler), but worth it IMO.

Brilliant, I had no idea about the stainless steel.

Thanks for the tips tips everyone. If anyone has any other random tips for a cooking novice please post.

How to boil an egg
Instructions are just for one egg though, im still not sure if you double the time for 2 eggs or leave it for the same time as 1 egg.

@ Kza - you sure that method doesn't burn the water??

Delia "daughter of satan" Smith got massive viewing figures teaching the nation how to boil an egg. Sad and true.

Ditto the steel soap, read the thread through and thought i was gonna post something amazing then some bugger had already done it before the end of the thread

Duuurrrrrrrrr...?
(Not just good in the kitchen )

Stainless stell soap can be bought in any Kaufhof/karstadt.
It really does work.

It does indeed work. But how the fuck?

Why buy soap when a spoon works just as well...

So it's a mystery. I like that.

I find doing up a few dishes while at a slow stage in the cooking usually takes care of the worst of the odors. I also don't usually mind the cooking smells that get on my hands either. If I cooked fish more often, maybe it would.

I found a nifty trick for chopping up chillies was simply to stab the chilie with a fork, then use a little paring knife to slice it up between the tongs. Didn't touch it, no burning accidents later.