The Only Product You Need to Remove Garlic Smells From Hands
Stainless steel soap bars promise to erase stubborn cooking odors, but can they beat lemons and regular hand soaps? We evaluated all three to find out.
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Growing up in an Italian family, garlic and onions were daily staples—as common as salt and pepper. As a kid, I simply got used to the scent of both on whichever family member was cooking that night. Dare I say: They even smell a little like love to me.
These days, I chop garlic nearly daily when cooking dinner. But, as much as it provides familial comfort, that doesn’t mean I want to smell like garlic all day.
- Skip to: Products We Evaluated How We Tested The Winner
The Contenders
There are a number of stainless steel soap bars to choose from, but we decided on this one because Kuhn Rikon is a trusted Swiss cookware brand. The bar is designed in the shape and size of a small bar of soap, only it’s made entirely of stainless steel and, of course, won’t get sudsy in water. The science behind how these bars remove odors isn’t conclusive—we couldn’t find any peer-reviewed studies on their efficacy. But it has been suggested that stainless steel can help eliminate sulfur-based malodors produced by foods like garlic, onions, and fish.
Use it like any bar of soap: Rub your hands with it under running water. It’s surprisingly lightweight for a metal bar (I weighed mine at home: 1.7 ounces).
We love this soap from Trader Joe’s, and it was one of our top picks in our store-brand hand soap evaluation. After dirtying our hands with soil, this soap got them cleanest and fastest, and did a relatively okay job at removing the scent of garlic. But how does it compare with a stainless steel bar soap and a lemon?
Lemons
Lemons need no introduction. The zesty multitasking fruit has cleaning and deodorizing power—within reason. CR reported that lemons can work as an effective fabric stain remover and deodorizer for stinky microwaves and garbage disposals. The citric acid in lemon juice reacts with volatile odor molecules and can convert them into less volatile compounds that don’t evaporate into the air as easily.
But does that mean you can stock up on bags of lemons and forgo metal soap bars—or even soap—for odors? Let’s find out.
How We Tested Each Product
The evaluation was simple: I chopped three bulbs of garlic each day for three days. After chopping, I really worked those garlic bits onto my hands and beneath my fingernails, which is a sneaky little place food odors like to hide. I asked my family members to smell my hands (I wasn’t very popular on those days). Then I washed my hands using Trader Joe’s soap on day one (I really worked the soap in and rubbed my hands together for about 3 minutes), the stainless steel bar on day two, and a squeezed lemon on day three.
Then the sniff test. I asked my kids and husband to smell my hands and rate how much, if any, garlic scent they could still detect.
The Winner
First Place: Lemons
The messiest method was also the most effective: Lemons for the win!
I sliced one lemon and squeezed half of the lemon’s juice over my hands, working its liquid underneath my fingernails, and continually rubbing it against my skin before washing it off with warm water. Lemon seeds fell into my sink, and a bit of cleanup was needed afterward. But when I dried my hands and presented them for smelling, my family agreed that about 60 percent of the garlic odor was gone.
I decided to go in for the kill. I squeezed the other half of the lemon on my hands, too. This time, I rubbed my hands with its liquid for a few minutes longer, before rinsing them clean. Bingo! Nearly all of the nasty scent had been neutralized, and the best part: It didn’t smell like the lemon was masking the garlic scent.
My hands even felt softer after washing them with water, so perhaps I benefited from an unexpected exfoliation treatment.
A few downsides to using lemons for this purpose include the mess, the extra few seconds it takes to cut lemons, the dirtying of a knife and plate in the process, and the cost of lemons. A 2-pound bag of lemons from Walmart cost about $4 at the time of this evaluation, which is about the same cost as the Trader Joe’s soap and about $13 less than the Kuhn Rikon Stainless Steel Soap Bar. The hand soap can be repurposed (you can argue that so can the lemons), and the metal soap bar lasts longer than both.
Oh, and if you happen to have even a tiny paper cut on your hand, prepare for it to sting from the lemon juice.
Second Place: Kuhn Rikon Stainless Steel Soap Bar
At first, the stainless steel soap bar felt odd to use—not bad, just different. Because of its shape, my mind expected it to act like a regular soap bar, so when it felt less smooth and didn’t create suds, it was hard to tell whether it was working.
I rubbed my hands with it under water for about 3 to 4 minutes. I also used the pointed end, shaped to fit under the fingertips, which is a nice touch. After I dried my hands and presented them to my kids and husband for a sniff test, they complained that they still smelled something, though they couldn’t readily identify the odor. “Your hands smell like food,” my daughter said.
It was only fair that I give the Kuhn Rikon the same second chance that I gave the lemon, so I returned to my sink and rubbed the bar on my hands under water again for another 3 minutes. The result was a little better, but I could smell enough garlic on my hands that I felt tempted to wash them a third time with scented hand soap.
Bottom line: The stainless steel soap bar worked well, but the lemon was more effective.
Third Place: Trader Joe’s Sea Breeze Castile Hand Soap
The hand soap came in last place because it failed to neutralize garlic odor. Instead, it masked it with a sweet and salty beach scent that I ordinarily love but that smelled pretty gross when blended with garlic. I washed my hands twice for about 3 minutes each time and used a total of four pumps of soap. After the second washing, the garlic odor was only 50 percent gone.
Our Takeaway
The most helpful thing about having a stainless steel soap bar in your kitchen is that it provides a fast, mess-free way to tackle odors, plus the small design details that reach under your fingernails are a major plus. But lemons got rid of the odor faster and negated the need to purchase another product I’d have to store in my under-sink cabinet or sink caddy.
As for hand soap? Save it for cleaning your hands—it wasn’t a match for foul garlic odors.
