Removing Garlic Odor

We don’t have a cure for removing garlic odor from your hands, but these three options can help.

We know firsthand that garlic odor is hard to remove from your hands. There are plenty of folk remedies for doing this: washing with baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice, salt, or toothpaste, or even rubbing your hands on stainless steel. Do any of these tricks work? To find out, we had five testers mince garlic and rub it on their hands, then try each of the methods listed above (plus washing with soap and water).

Washing with all of these substances lessened the odor at least a little, with baking soda and lemon juice outperforming the others, and rubbing one’s hands on stainless steel succeeding just as well. Why? Some of the aromatic compounds in garlic are weak acids that can be neutralized by alkaline baking soda. Because not all aroma compounds are acidic, baking soda can’t neutralize the odor 100 percent. Stainless steel removes some of the odor when iron atoms in the stainless steel exchange some of their electrons with sulfur atoms from the volatile aroma compounds, rendering them nonvolatile (i.e., nonstinky). Lemon juice contains lemon oils that dissolve the oil-soluble aroma compounds in garlic, plus its own fragrance masks the remaining odor.

THE BOTTOM LINE  Lemon juice, baking soda, and stainless steel all help a little, but there is no magic cure for removing garlic smell from your hands.