Professional cleaners reveal 6 secrets they swear by for banishing lingering cooking odors fast

The smell of food can feel divine: freshly-baked cookies wafting through the house, the richness of bubbled stews coating the air – but it doesn't smell quite so good once a few days have passed and the aroma has stuck, souring the scent of your kitchen or home.

Here, our panel of cleaning experts reveal five quick ways to banish cooking smells, leaving your kitchen's scent refreshed and free from lingering odors after cooking.

It is entirely possible to have a fresh-smelling kitchen even after cooking if you learn how to implement some hidden tricks people with nice-smelling homes always use, in combination with specific hacks to target the smell of your kitchen.

1. Clean as you cook

A simple yet effective way to keep cooking odors in check is to clean up as you go. It's tempting to focus all of our energy and attention onto making the meal, leaving dishes and surface stains to pile up at till the end. But if you clean as you go, the cooking smells emitted from your cooking area will have less time to fester in the kitchen, reducing the staying power of odors.

Muffetta Krueger, owner of Muffetta's Housekeeping, says, 'Food residues left on counters, pans, or stovetops are common culprits for bad smells, but if you clean up spills and grease immediately, odors are less likely to linger.'

Muffetta recommends wiping down your kitchen surfaces with a DIY natural cleaning spray solution of mixed equal parts lemon juice and water for a fresh chemical-free scent. Lemon is a particular good choice if you're seeking to make your home smell nice when you're sensitive to fragrance.

A lemon, the MR.SIGA microfiber cleaning cloth pack of 12 and one of the great value all purpose plastic spray bottles 32oz from Walmart will do the trick, but a kitchen spray like the Lysol All Purpose Cleaner in Lemon Breeze from Walmart will work too if you prefer using a commercial cleaner.

'You can add a few drops of white vinegar to a microfiber cleaning cloth to target harder-to-lift stains as well,' adds Muffetta. Vinegar is great at cutting through grime and there are plenty of things you can clean with vinegar at home.

If you don't have time to fully clean your pans with your usual dish soap and scrubbing brushes mid cook, fill them with soap and warm water to steep so the cleaning process has at least begun.

2. Keep an open pack of baking soda nearby

Baking soda has a little known magical quality making it one of nature's best deodorizers: it naturally acts to neutralize odors through it alkaline properties, eliminating smells with ease.

If you're looking for an quick, hands-off approach to help freshen up the scent of your kitchen post-cooking, all you need to do is place some baking powder like the ARM & HAMMER Pure Baking Soda from Target into bowls around your kitchen or sprinkle it in particularly odor-prone areas.

'I recommend sprinkling baking soda in the trash bin or leaving a bowl on the counters you cooked near overnight,' says Muffetta. 'For drains that might smell of food, you can mix together equal parts baking soda and vinegar, let it fizz in the drain for a couple of minutes, and rinse it away with hot water.'

The fizzing is a chemical reaction working to lift away stuck-on food in your drain system that could keep food smells lingering long after your meal is done.

3. Use coffee grounds

Coffee grounds can be used much in the same way as baking soda to neutralize and eliminate lingering food odors in your kitchen and to deodorize a fridge, though they may leave a subtle scent of coffee in both spaces.

Karina Toner, operations manager and professional cleaner at Spekless, says, 'Coffee grounds absorb odors and leave a subtle, pleasant aroma, so long as they are replaced every few days.'

To harness the odor-absorbing properties of coffee, just place small bowls of coffee beans like ones from the Dunkin’ Original Blend Whole Bean Coffee, Medium Roast, 12 oz. Bag from Walmart or any ground coffee around your kitchen, especially in areas where food odors may accumulate to banish bad kitchen smells for good. Next to your stove, sink and bin are logical choices.

Remember not to re-use this coffee for drinking as it will no longer be fresh, and to only use dry, unused coffee for this hack to avoid causing more bad odors to form in your kitchen.

4. Ensure your bin is clean

One of the most common cleaning tips people neglect when trying to eliminate food odors from their home is cleaning their trash can. Your counters could be clean, your kitchen could be well ventilated and your dishes could be all done, but if a bad smell is coming from your trash can, the whole kitchen can be impacted.

'Trash cans are one of the biggest sources of lingering odors,' says Muffetta. 'Food waste decomposes quickly inside of them, producing unpleasant smells, so it's important to take time to clean our bins to eliminate food odors at the source.'

If you cooked a particularly pungent dish or food residue splattered onto the surface of your bin, it's recommended to take out the trash and wipe down your bin immediately to maintain a nice-smelling kitchen.

This can be done using a natural deodorizer like a mixture of equal parts water and vinegar, or using a pleasant-smelling disinfectant like the Clorox Scentiva Bleach-Free Multi-Surface Cleaner Spray in Grapefruit & Orange Blossom from Walmart.

You can also try an essential oil trash can odor hack for general maintenance.

5. Simmer natural fresheners

After cleaning your kitchen's surfaces and dishes post-cooking and taking out any pungent trash, creating a simmer pot on your stove of citrus fruits and herbs will give any remaining food odors a final kick out of your kitchen, and make the space smell amazing.

'Simmering aromatic ingredients releases pleasant scents that neutralize odors instead of just covering bad odors up,' says Karina.

To make a simmer pot, gather up the following ingredients for the best results:

• Lemons: these are available at many stores, including individual Lemons at Target
• Oranges: large Navel Oranges at Target will be easy to slice.
• Cinnamon sticks: the Cinnamon Sticks - 0.75oz - Good & Gather™ at Target will work perfectly.
• Cloves: you can purchase Great Value Organic Whole Cloves at Walmart.

Slice up ingredients such as lemons and oranges into inch-thick rounds and place them into a pot of water with cinnamon sticks and cloves. Allow this to gently boil on your stove for half an hour after cooking to rid your room of smells.

You can leave your simmer pot recipe to sit on the stove overnight to encourage your kitchen to capture as much of its essence as possible, or once half an hour has passed and your home smells good, enjoy the boiled mixture as a rejuvenating cup of fruit tea.

6. Increase ventilation and cross air flow

Keep your extractor fans and hoods in use when cooking, and for around 5-10 minutes afterwards to help make use of this technology's ability to suck steam and smells from your stove and push them outside.

Punteha van Terheyden, head of Solved at Homes & Gardens says, 'I'm really sensitive to smells and have a three-prong approach to keeping my kitchen and home smelling fresh when cooking. I close the door to the kitchen to limit how much smell travels throughout my home, keep the extractor fan on during the cooking, and open a window away from where the vent exits. This stops the cooking smells being pulled back into the kitchen.

Cooking smells are fortunately not too difficult to remove from your kitchen, but if you start to smell any of these 7 smells that might be a sign of something dangerous in your home, it's time to take immediate action.