How A Potato Can Fix Your Garlic-Scented Cutting Board

There's nothing as aromatic as garlic-forward dishes (like a batch of these garlic butter chicken thighs). But there is one annoying problem: a smelly cutting board. If you've given your cutting board a wash with dish soap and found that everything you've chopped on it since (from apples and bananas to cheese and chocolate cake) has absorbed a distinct garlicky odor, you need to grab the nearest potato and a box grater. This super-fast hack fixes a garlic-scented cutting board in minutes to get rid of that pungent smell for good.

To get started, place a box grater on your cutting board and grab a regular old potato (any variety of spud will work but larger ones, like Russets or Yukon Golds, will be easier to grate than small ones like fingerling or new potatoes). Shred the spud on the side of the grater and spread the shavings out on the board. Allow the shredded tubers to sit on the board for a few minutes so they can work their magic and eliminate any unwanted garlicky odors before washing your board again. You can also use an apple if you have one in the fruit bowl, however, you'll likely have more uses for leftover shredded potato. As the spuds will absorb some of the garlicky character of the pungent cloves you've chopped on your board, they'll work well in savory dishes where their aroma can be celebrated like hash browns and latkes.

If you've ever cut a potato or apple into segments and left them out on the counter, you'll have noticed that the cut sides turn brown. This process is called oxidation and occurs when the starches and sugars inside the potatoes react with the oxygen in the air and change color. Spuds contain an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase, which oxidizes the pungent sulfurous compounds in garlic and turns them odorless on contact. Shredding your potato using the finest side of your grater will release as much of this enzyme as possible while spreading the spuds out will guarantee that every stinky spot is neutralized. The result? A win for your olfactory and a sparkling cutting board that won't ruin your next batch of watermelon with biting garlicky residue.

Once you've dealt with your garlic-scented cutting board, you can get to other important job of deodorizing your hands. Luckily, there's a stainless steel trick that gets rid of garlic odor on your hands. All you have to do is hold a stainless steel knife under a running faucet and run your fingers along the non-sharp section of the knife — the oxide layer on the knife reacts with the sulfur-containing chemical called allicin in the garlic, causing it to cling to the stainless steel instead of your hands.