How do you avoid stinking up your house while frying fish?

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mimig

Assistant Cook
Joined
Nov 20, 2014
Messages
8
Location
Danville
I usually soak the raw fish in white wine before I do anything with it. That helps a lot. But I was wondering if there're any other means of controlling the odor while frying fish.
Do you know of any ?
 
Other than being able to have excellent ventilation to the outside, I can't think of a thing. We cook fish in our house probably more than the average and, depending on how much is fried, the odor varies with the quantity.

In the warmer months, the fish is cooked outside on the covered porch/patio.
 
A very efficient hooded vent....


...that exhausts to the outdoors, not back into the kitchen.

Exhaust fans draw air from the interior of the house and blow it outdoors. If your house is airtight to save energy, it's difficult to draw the air and the fan is less efficient. To help the process, crack a window or door to make it easy for the exhaust fan to suck up air to vent outdoors.

This is especially helpful if there's enough smoke to set off a smoke detector. In that case, open a window beyond the smoke detector so the air pulled in from outside passes by the smoke detector and takes any smoke with it to the fan.
 
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We eat a lot of fish, and I've never noticed much of an odor while frying it. We have a vent to the outside, but I don't always use it.

Are you frying it too hot perhaps - to the point where the oil is smoking? Anytime there is smoke, it will carry odors with it.

Or maybe there's something wrong with my sniffer.
 
Build a house with enclosed kitchen and separate ventilation system. ;):) . Sorry, could not help myself. I just use one of those smelly candles.
 
Depends on the kind of fish too... I like to grill salmon, either on cast iron or over a kitchen gas grill and they really stink up the house if I don't run the vent full blast.
My wife likes to fry orange roughy (frozen ones from Costco) and they tend to cook odorless for the most part even without the vent running.
 
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To be honest, I'm rarely bothered by cooking smells, including fish (although I rarely fry, usually bake or grill/broil). All that tells me is that there's a cook in the house. When I use the cast iron grill pan that came with the new gas range, I turn on the vent fan (vents externally), and it does a good job of eliminating the smoke, but the odors still waft through the house. I find those odors to be quite homey. :chef:
 
Depends on the kind of fish too... I like to grill salmon, either on cast iron or over a kitchen gas grill and they really stink up the house if I don't run the vent full blast.
My wife likes to fry orange roughy (frozen ones from Costco) and they tend to cook odorless for the most part even without the vent running.

I think the kind of fish is everything too RF. Salmon stinks to me, and tastes "fishy" however it's cooked. Other fish shouldn't smell "fishy" before it's cooked or when cooking it.
 
Most places I live at have a window of some kind in the kitchen near an outlet and the window. I use one of those small clamp on electric fans and clamp it somewhere on the cabinet trim above the fryer pointing out toward an open window. The fryer is of coarse placed near the window. I also turn on my HVAC whole house fan. I custom order Nordic Air brand carbon impregnated furnace filters for my furnace. They do pretty well at removing odors.
 
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What I do is turn on my exhaust fan on the stove full blast and then run through the house with the Febreeze after I fry the fish. It takes care of the odors. I had to go out of the house one day to get more breading and came back in the middle of frying and was bowled over by the scent left behind. I didn't know it was that bad. After that I got the Frbreeze out and was good to go after that. The curtains were the worst for keeping the smell in.
 
A lot of kitchen range hoods aren't vented, so the filtering is useless. Fabreze is pretty good but like you say, you have to run around spraying up in the air like the fresh air nymph, lol. In 20 years, drones equipped with Fabreze will take off...spray...go back...land...recharge and load up on Fabreze...take off...spray Fabreze...fly back.
 
I don't think we have ever fried fish. The fishy odor I believe is mostly associated with fatty/oily type fish and of course fish that aren't fresh.
 
A lot of kitchen range hoods aren't vented, so the filtering is useless. Fabreze is pretty good but like you say, you have to run around spraying up in the air like the fresh air nymph, lol. In 20 years, drones equipped with Fabreze will take off...spray...go back...land...recharge and load up on Fabreze...take off...spray Fabreze...fly back.

I don't think you will have to wait 20 years. I give it 2. My vent hood goes outside and the neighbors comment on what smelled so good the other day, it had to be me cooking something good. I like to do roasts so they can be used for more than one meal. My Mother was one for making things stretch. We never knew we were poor growing up. She tried to keep that hidden from us. Thinking back, I know now we were poor. After all, who freezes leftovers with a plan to make it into something yummy later on?
 
I have tried having a large bowl of white vinegar out when making "stinky" things. I prefer to cook those things outside, however.


I've never associated leftovers with one's financial situation. Growing up, leftovers were planned (my mom hated to cook, so if she could cook once and serve the same thing again, she took that route). It made her life easier. I tend to do the same thing--make enough for several meals. I figure if I'm going to heat up the oven, I might as well make two roasted chickens/pork roasts/whatever. It doesn't use any more electricity to cook two than it does to cook one. But then, our electricity rates are the highest in North America. We try to cut back on the electricity bill whenever we can.
 
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