If there's a glass jar in our house, there's a good chance it's being used to store any number of goodies: batches of minced garlic I like to whir up in my Vitamix, quick pickles, decanted gochugaru (Korean red pepper flakes), a variety of dried spices, remnant soy bean or red pepper pastes.
Because the contents of these jars are usually pungent, I normally don't have any problems using them interchangeably with one another. It's when I need to fill them with milder things like smoothies and jams that I run into trouble.
For the most part, a simple soak with hot water and Dawn usually does the trick. I know baking soda and vinegar are popular deodorizers, too. But when the smells are especially stubborn (Hotline! Alert!), the culprit is not usually the glass jar itself, but the lid. Depending on whether it's a standard screw top or a glass lid with a rubber gasket, the lids are usually what harbor the odors and need some extra TLC.
Even after a soak in a hot, sudsy, vinegary solution, with a follow-up spin through the dishwasher, smells don't always disappear. I usually have to rely on a multipronged approach to get them fresh and clean again, incorporating a tactic my own mom shared with me that works every time.
The sun! There's nothing like good ol' fashioned sunlight to do the heavy lifting for you. It's believed that the sun's powerful UV rays work as a natural disinfectant, and I can see (and smell) the proof for myself when I line up glass jars, their lids, plastic containers (with lids), cutting boards (plastic and wood) out on our balcony for a few hours in the middle of a sunny day. Even kimchi stains, whose tenacity alone warrants a separate cutting board altogether, seem to lighten considerably with a little time in the sun.
If I run into an especially malodorous jar that's adamant against relinquishing its smells, off to the recycling bin it goes! The rest can stay with their fellow sunbathing friends.
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Written by: Hana Asbrink
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9 Comments
Since your butter keeper is ceramic you may have more options to remove the offending odors. In a lab situation, I would suggest a soak in a potassium permanganate-sulfuric acid bath, but that is impractical and unavailable for home use, not to mention hazardous.
I am presuming that you have already subjected the offending ceramic to multiple trips through a dishwasher but still detect the offending smell. Dish washing detergents are highly alkaline and very hot, with powerful solublizing abilities. (BTW, it is the chemical action of the dishwasher pellet that does the actual cleaning, not all that sloshing, swirling, and spraying. A dishwasher is actually a hot chemical treatment chamber.)
So here is what I would do in order of increasing severity of treatment.
1. As the theme of this article suggests leaving the container in strong sunlight for a few days may help. The sun is a powerful source of UV, which can and does destroy organic compounds. However getting equal exposure to all surfaces, nooks and crannies can be problematical. So you would need to be very patient and diligent in turning the container for maximum exposure.
2. Soak the dish in household ammonia. The idea here is to attempt to form water soluble salts and eneamines with the malodorous compounds, which can be then washed away with soap and water. (Worth a try, but I don't hold out much hope if the dishwasher did not remove the smell.)
3. Liberal use Easy-Off oven cleaner spray, then place the wet sprayed butter keeper in a large plastic bag overnight. This is a strongly alkaline solution (wear gloves and glasses and spray in a well ventilated area.) Again the idea is to solubilize the offending malodorants, for removal when the dish is subsequently washed. (Again, this is worth a try, but likely will only be marginally better than what the dishwasher can do.)
4. Last and most severe treatment. Owing to the ceramic being heat proof, you could place the dish in a self cleaning oven and run the clean cycle. The high temperatures will pyrolyze and eliminate any organic compounds in or on the dish. In a lab situation, I used to do this frequently with impossible to clean glassware, by taking it to the glassblower for an overnight trip through the annealing oven. Worked like a champ every time.
Treatment with things like vinegar, dish soap, or, in my opinion, more laughably vinegar and baking soda, which from a chemist's POV does nothing useful except foam, are likely to be ineffective or you wouldn't be asking the question in the first place.
Hope this helps. I will be interested to hear how this works out for you.
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