I've heard touching stainless steel after chopping and handling garlic helps but I haven't found it to work all that well.
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The smell of garlic is due to sulfur compounds. When you rub your hands against stainless steel, the iron of the stainless steel will react with some small volume of those compounds, but much more will remain in your hands. Rubbing your hands against an iron object does not work. The sulfur smell compounds are water soluble to slightly water soluble, so rinsing your hands in cold water and then soap and water should work as well as the recipes suggesting Noxzema, lemon juice, salt, baking soda, raw potatoes, tomato paste solutions, or mouthwash. |
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A quick rinse with some lemon juice. Then wash your hands normally with soap and you're done. |
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Stainless steel does work, but you have to rub it over your hands under running water. As noted above, this causes a chemical reaction that breaks down the garlic oils so they can be rinsed away. Using hand or dish soap in addition to the steel helps speed this process. |
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I always use a stainless steel 'hand soap', such as this one with a little bit of regular hand soap. Wash for about 30 seconds and the garlic smell's gone. |
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I always have some coffee around to remove smells like that from my hands. It's not so sci-fi like rubbing steel over your hands, but works for me. |
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Washing your hands by rubbing your fingers on a stainless steel knive under running water works really well. |
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I find that cold water and lemon juice works best. There's also a theory that cutting a potato in half and rubbing it on your hands will work but so far I've never tried it! |
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