The Kitchen Essential That Can Eliminate Fried Food Odors After You Cook

Americans spend a huge amount of money on food, and a majority of that — over 55%, according to the Escoffier School of Culinary Arts — is spent on food not cooked from home. Fast food and fast casual dining restaurants receive the most takeout orders, which are notorious for selling particularly greasy foods. Of course, whether you're ordering food from a local burger joint or setting up your own deep fat fryer by dunking food into a pot of hot oil, the resulting smell will similarly stick to your home. If you can't seem to eliminate the smell with a casual cleaning, and don't want to resort to deeper sanitization methods like scrubbing with bleach solutions, the coffee you (probably) already have in the house might be just what you need.

Plenty of ink has been spilled about how leftover coffee grounds can be used in your yard and garden because it adds an extra layer of organic matter to the soil. However, coffee is also ideal for neutralizing odors. There's a few reasons for this. For one, caffeine contains a lot of nitrogen, which enhances the ability of carbon to trap more smelly elements like sulfur. Coffee grounds also have a porous structure that makes it even easier to trap scents. Fresh-brewed coffee in the air will have a similar neutralizing impact on that greasy fast food smell. Regardless of how you take your java, it's great to have some on hand to counteract fried food odors.

Though you could point to alternative home remedies like activated charcoal or baking soda, which has a similar effect as coffee, this common kitchen leftover is easy to dry after being used and could take effect on smells as potent as your kitchen garbage can within a day of being set. To dry them, spread some used coffee grounds over a baking sheet in an even layer. You can allow them to air dry in a well-ventilated spot, which may take a few days, or bake them on your oven's lowest heat setting (the "keep warm" setting will also work) for about an hour or so. Since you're more than likely going to be making a pot of coffee every morning, it's easy enough to employ a simple coffee ground hack for a fresh-smelling home, especially if you're a fan of fried foods and other pungent cuisine.

There's little prep work needed for using coffee grounds to eliminate odors after cooking fried food. Just keeping an open bowl of dried coffee grounds near the area in question is enough to start absorbing scents, or you can make sachets by stuffing grounds in mesh containers like cloth bags or old socks to get them into harder-to-reach or places prone to making a mess. Ground coffee could even be laid out on a baking sheet to cover a larger area near your stove or fryer (this is also useful if you want to use coffee grounds for a better smelling fridge). And keep in mind that if your beans or pre-ground coffee come in a sealable metal can, this is also an ideal vessel to dump excess fry oil so it can be properly recycled.