The holiday seasons means inviting friends and family into your home and putting your cooking skills to the test. If you’re not used to hosting, this can mean humidity and smoke in the kitchen you don’t usually have to deal with.
With just a few simple steps, you can keep the air clear and free from unwelcome odors.
Use your exhaust hood
Whether you’re using your whole stove top or just one burner at a time, it helps to ventilate by turning on the fan in your oven’s hood. The fan can remove airborne grease, fumes, smoke and steam with its filtration system. Sucking the hot and/or damp air up and removing it from your kitchen can keep the room at a comfortable temperature.
Open a window
Don’t have a hood fan? No problem. Crack open a window or windows to ventilate the room and remove heavy scents.
Create a draft
It’s most beneficial if you can open more than one window. Having multiple windows open will create a draft that can move smoke and steam away from your cooking efforts. If you are unable to open two windows in the same room, opening one down the hall will also create moving air.
Use a box fan in the window
Box fans are an easy fix for a steamy room. Place one facing outward in your window frame. This may seem counterintuitive, but you want the air getting pulled from the room and blown outside. Placing the box fan facing out will move the smoky air out.
Keep the cooking temperatures down
Cooking is often a balance of multitasking and timing. You may have several things going at once or have to time out when you start the sides versus the main dish. If you’re boiling something, don’t let it run high. A full-on boil produces a lot of steam and fogs up your room. Getting the water to a near-boil instead of full-on will reduce the amount of steam but will cook your pasta while using less energy.
Avoid burning your food
Keeping the temperatures low on your stove top and oven may reduce another problem: smoke. If you are trying to prevent any potential alarms going off, keeping the temperatures low and cooking slow may prevent potential air pollutants in your home.
Contact Sun Heating & Cooling if you’re interested in improving the indoor air in your home. We want you and your family to live cleaner and breathe better.
