Your Kitchen Needs a Small Fan

Cook enough and you will end up damaging or irritating some part of your body. Between sharp blades, red-hot burners, dirty ovens, and a stinking onion, there are many ways to sharpen one or more of your senses. The eyes are particularly vulnerable to abuse, as they are quite delicate. (Though they’re less likely to get hurt than your fingers, which are always in the line of fire.) Luckily, there’s an easy way to keep your eyes healthy : buy a cheap little fan and keep it in the kitchen.

The main job of a fan is to move air around, and you can use it to blow “bad” air out of your eyes and out the window (or at least out of the kitchen). If your casserole spills and your oven starts to smoke, you can point a fan at the fire alarm to drown out its screams, then point it at an open window to blow the smoke out of the house. (However, keep the oven closed. If you open it, only oxygen gets inside, and it is oxygen that stimulates combustion.)

Even if the kitchen isn’t smoky, it’s nice to have a fan nearby to blow unpleasant fried aromas or lingering fishy smells out the window. (I love fried food, but the smell of fried butter lingers .)

And while you can use goggles , water , and even your freezer to cut down onion tears, the best way to deal with syn-propantial-S-oxide (a strong tear-causing compound) is to physically remove it from your cutting board and out of the room. and the fan can do it. (I heard this is the only way Elton Brown cuts onions.)

What’s more, this trick works instantly: no need to wait for the syn-propantial-S-oxide to be immobilized by the cold of the freezer, and no need to dip anything into large buckets of water. All you have to do is set up a fan next to your cutting board so that the air blows over the onions and is perpendicular to your body. Once it’s in place, flip the switch and start chopping, letting the fan blow out bad air and sparing your delicate eyes unnecessary pain.