I really didn’t have much faith in this little thing. It’s been in the kitchen for years. Just sitting there, minding it’s own business, waiting for me to use it.
The thing I refer to is a piece of stainless steel, shaped like a small bar of soap. It was advertised as being able to remove strong odors from your hands. Odors like garlic and onion. It also mentioned fish, but I was also told if your fish smells too much like… well… fish, it isn’t fresh. So you could have other issues other than just the smell of it.
But the thing is, I have rarely used this thing. I’m not sure why. I guess in part I’ve never really believed in it. I mean, how could a hunk of metal take the smell of garlic or onion off your hands. Those are odors that hang around for a while. They leave when they’re good and ready. And if you have been cutting up onions or garlic and you have it on your hands, you probably want to not be touching your nose and eyes.
But the other night, as I finished chopping up several cloves of garlic to be used in making dinner, I decided I should use it. On the few occasions I had in the past, it did seem to work. But I still had no faith in it. How could a hunk of metal make a strong odor like that just go away? What sort of sorcery was at work here?
Apparently, there is an actual reason for this. The odor from things like onion and garlic is the result of the production of a sulfur called allicin. There is no real scientific study that has been done on this, but the thought is that chromium, which is one of the things added to the steel to make is stainless, somehow bonds with the allicin and breaks it down. You wash your hands with the hunk of stainless steel, give them a rinse with a bit of soap and water and the odor is gone.
You don’t even need a fancy soap shaped piece of stainless steel. Any stainless steel will do. You can use a spoon, a fork, maybe even the stainless steel of the sink. I wouldn’t recommend knives or other sharp objects. Rubbing those sorts of things over your hands might not turn out well. So maybe stick to the less stabby stainless steel items.
Finally, after several decades of looking at this thing and ignoring it, I have become a believer. It really does seem to work.
So from now on if my hands smell like garlic, it’s because I want them to smell like garlic. I do kind of like it.