I’ve found a great recipe for a grilled haddock dish (grilled in the UK sense - what Americans would call “broiled”).
The only problem is that is that it’s a strong smelling fish, and after we’ve eaten it, there’s a lingering haddocky aroma, which lasts for a few days. We tend to mask it afterwards by boiling a pan of water with a cinnamon stick and a lemon in it (good tip, that), but I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions to stop the smell at source? We already open the windows, and use the extractor fan hood above the oven.
White vinegar. I’ve heard two methods. Fastest may be a little vinegar added to water and simmered on the stove at the same time as cooking the fish. A little slower but works overnight is to leave the undiluted vinegar in a bowl next to the stove. You could try adding some white vinegar to your lemon/cinnamon simmer.
A bowl of any one of vinegar, baking soda or coffee grounds will remove most smells overnight.
The most important thing is to close up as much of the house as you can during cooking to localize the smell. But you are already doing everything else that helps.
Although now that I recall, I have several times slow cooked fish in one of those 1400W turbo ovens on the rinse setting. The two remarkable things about the method are that the fish comes out looking and tasting much better than other methods and the lower temperature seems to produce far less odors.
What you’re smelling may be fish grease lingering somewhere. Wipe down the parts of the vent fan that you can reach, the top of the oven, and any other surfaces that might have been spattered.
Is the overhead vent/fan pulling enough air? Make sure it’s not blocked or flowing poorly for some reason, e.g. the grease traps may need cleaning or something.
The overhead hood fan above our stove pulls plenty of air, but the ducting that carried the air through the cabinet directly above it used to have a whole bunch of gaps, it was very poorly built. This meant that a good portion of whatever the fan sucked in was just blasted out into that cabinet, and through the gaps in the cabinet doors back into the kitchen. A few years ago I went through the tedious process of covering all of the gaps with high quality foil tape (see www.mcmaster.com, #76145A33; not cheap, but also useful for sealing HVAC ductwork), and now the whole system is much more reliable at extracting cooking odors.
I’m assuming the smell is from splattered aerosolized fishy grease. Not too much you can do about it at its source except get a stronger exhaust fan, and blowing the fish air out of the house before it has a chance to settle onto surfaces. When I cook smelly stuff I have to open the doors and have box fans blowing through the kitchen. Just opening windows isn’t enough.
Other ideas: use a higher-sided pan to catch more of the splatters. Don’t use added oil in cooking. Use a leaner fish. Cook it faster at higher broiler setting. Add more garlic to the recipe to make the fishy smell more aromatic.
That’s what I was going to say. It took me a few years of using my deep fryer and complaining about the smell for the next two days to finally just move it outside when I wanted to use it. No more smell.
If you can put your fish on a grill or George Foreman (plugged in outside), you’ll have no smell at all.
