Rid Your Hands Of Onion Smell With Julia Child's Unique Solution

Onions are a key ingredient for some of our favorite meals. Whether it's roasts, tacos, pasta, or homemade French onion soup, there's a plethora of recipes that involve those delicious layered vegetables. They might make your eyes burn, but they're worth it! Learning how to chop an onion is an important skill for all chefs to master before jumping to the food processor. Although, the smell of a freshly cut onion can linger on your hands for ages (we know it all too well) and washing them with soapy warm water doesn't always seem to do the trick.

However, there's a clever solution to this odorous problem that Chef Julia Child told us about decades ago. Child, whose method of writing recipes was revolutionary and who permanently altered the culinary landscape with her groundbreaking cooking show, "The French Chef," was a constant source of kitchen wisdom. Just like this ingenious method for washing off that nasty onion smell, which is easier than you'd think! By washing your hands with a combination of cold water, hot water, and the special ingredient, salt, you can banish that onion odor for good.

In a clip from the first season of "The French Chef" where Child prepares a recipe for French onion soup, she explains after chopping onions that hot water will in fact "set" the smell of the onion on your hands, making it harder to get off. Most at-home cooks wash their hands with warm water to get rid of any bacteria, but in this case, it sounds useless. Instead, Child recommends washing your hands in cold water and then "rub them in salt, wash off the salt. And then do them in hot water and soap."

We would never think to use salt to wash our hands, but Child is an authority on at-home cooking. Salt is incredibly absorbent, so it most likely works with the water to take off any of the leftover onion molecules on your hands. Child also reminds us that if this method doesn't work the first time, "you can always repeat it if necessary." Going through a couple more handwashing steps sounds like a good trade-off for fresh-smelling palms in the kitchen.