Cooking Without a Kitchen Fan

[David Ross]

It happened again tonight when I seared a steak and then finished it in the oven.

I live in a tiny little house that was built in 1943. The kitchen measures all of 8 x 10 feet at the most. It's what I call my "galley" kitchen. (Somewhat smaller than the kitchen galleys on a large airliner to be sure). One of the disadvantages of living in a little old house with a small kitchen is that I don't have an exhaust fan-no industrial strength suction system to draw out the smoke when I sear a steak or the smoke caused by sugar oozing out of an apple pie. The smoke detector inevitably goes off, worrying me that the neighbors will hear it and call the Fire Department. Alas, I'm left with having to disconnect the smoke detector, open the doors and windows and take a towel to fan away the smoke. I doubt I'll ever go to the expense of cutting a hole in the roof to install a kitchen exhaust fan in such a tiny kitchen. It's an aggravation not having one, but it certainly doesn't disuade me from cooking foods I know will cause smoke in the kitchen.

Anyone else out there cook without a kitchen fan?

[heidih]

I have been in many vacation rentals where this is the case. I just try to catch the cross drafts. In this cottage I do have a fan but it is SO loud that I prefer not to use it. I am all about open windows and oscillating fans in the summer.

[Pilori]

Yes, my apartment kitchen is 40 square feet and has no fan. This coupled with the fact that my whole apartment is ~500 square feet makes it so that it fills up pretty fast with smoke when I sear a steak and the alarm inevitably goes off. I'm just waiting for it to seep into the hallway and the whole building have to evacuate

[Angela Knipple]

Yes, but not for too much longer I hope. Our house was built in 1912, so I know exactly what you're going through. We just make sure that all the room doors are open to diffuse the smoke as much as possible and we have transoms over the back and side doors that we can open to create a cross draft. The worst times for us have been the smoke from peppers when making mole and hot and numbing rabbit, but anything with a strong odor (fish) tends to linger at our house. We finally broke down and remodeled, so we should have an actual exhaust system in place within the next few months.

[Alex]

I used to. I highly recommend a window fan. Try an amazon.com search.

[Paul Bacino]

We have a ceiling fan, helps a bit.. but I feel your smoke!! That window fan, reversed to suck air out of the hose is a good Idea.. I have also used stand fans.

Paul

[LizD518]

My new apartment has three smoke detectors in a total of 500 square feet. I found this out about a week after I moved in when I was searing a pork tenderloin on the stovetop with the plan of finishing it in the oven. Here I am, running around trying to open windows (except the kitchen window, which was stuck!), turn on overhead fans (which probably made it worse), and generally cursing up a storm, and every two minutes a different smoke detector was going off. Oh, and I'm trying to simultaneously finish the side dishes as well. But at least I know that I'll be informed if I ever have a real fire.

[nibor]

For exactly this reason I am going to buy a small outdoor gas grill.

[mkayahara]

Yeah, living in a 1906 house here, and even though our kitchen is a good size, the lack of exhaust means that cooking just about anything causes the smoke detector to go off. I would've taken the batteries out long ago, except that there are none: it's wired directly into the house electrical system, and there seems to be no way to shut it up other than to wave a towel at it. If I know in advance that whatever I'm cooking is likely to set it off, I'll open the window and block off the doorway with a curtain, and that usually prevents it.

We're hoping to remodel sometime soon (though we've been saying that for 3 years now, ever since we bought the house), so after that it won't be an issue. It'll be the first time I've ever had an actual exhaust fan, rather than a recirculating one. I've never understood recirculating fans; do people find they actually prevent the smoke detector from going off, or are they intended for something else entirely?

[nolnacs]

My rental apartment does have a kitchen fan but as far as I can tell as it does it push the smoke around the kitchen resulting in zero benefit.

I find it to be incredibly aggravating and does somewhat influence how I cook. For instance, I have started searing steaks with a blowtorch instead of in a pan since it produces much less smoke. When I bake pies, I make sure to have a pan or aluminum foil underneath the pie to catch the drippings before they fill my small apartment with smoke.

[weinoo]

Manhattan apartments = no exhaust fans (to the outdoors, that is). In the summer, I install a window fan and it helps very little. I used to turn off the smoke alarms prior to searing, but then I bought a smoke alarm like this one which has a silence feature; by pressing the button, you can turn off the alarm for about 10 minutes...

By pressing the Hush button, you can easily and safely silence nuisance alarms caused by non-emergency situations, such as overcooked dinners.

[BadRabbit]

I find most home fans to be worthless anyways. Unless you are going to shell out the big bucks to install a quality hood and exhaust system, most people have to deal with crappy ventilation. My kitchen is 400 square feet and has a standard exhaust fan and it's still an issue.

For that reason, I usually use a cast iron pan on my gas grill to sear or blacken foods. I also have an hot plate that I can sit on my table on my back porch for this purpose (I do have the benefit of my back porch being right off my kitchen).

Edited April 20, 2011 by BadRabbit (log)

[hathor]

Like Weinoo said, NYC apartments don't have much going on in the way of venting. I never heard of a smoke alarm with a temporary off button...that's something I could use.

Every once in awhile I make steak with burning thyme branches on top. Everyone knows their place... Jeff stands by the main alarm with a towel, son & any other guests stand by the window with their towels. Like I said, I only make it once in awhile.

Our Italy house, circa 11th century is a whole other can of smoke. We bit the bullet and put in a nice hood, and vented it through a conveniently placed hole in the stone wall of the kitchen. Only, we have NO idea where the smoke goes. Could go up to the roof, could go into Silvo's house, could just go into a space between the walls. It sucks air, I test it with tissues stuck up to it, but honestly could not tell you where it goes and there is NO WAY that I'm opening up the wall to find out.

[HungryC]

When I moved into my present (old, raised, wooden) house, it had no kitchen exhaust...so I promptly bought a downdraft Amana stove and cut a hole in the floor & ran the duct out to the edge of the house. Boy, is it useless. It does remove a minimal amount of air from the kitchen, but it also draws every burner's flame sideways. Mostly, it removes heat. So I generally use it only when I'm done cooking. Opening the front & side doors works way better than this dinky exhaust fan.

[SylviaLovegren]

Current tiny rental has a smoke alarm that goes off if the big electric burner is boiling water, so we've got very practiced with the towel and open door routine. We're moving into a full-sized house next month and I'm hoping the smoke alarm set-up is better there!

[MNMoody]

I live in a tiny two bedroom apartment, the simplest method we use is open the kitchen window get a larg-ish normal fan like you would by at target and point it facing outwards towards the outside, and open a window on the opposite side of the house, and bam, presto the current of air carries out the smoke.

[Genkinaonna]

We have a hood built into the micro over the stove, but it doesn't seem to do a whole lot. Strangely enough, the smoke detector only goes off if the kids are in bed, otherwise it's relatively silent on the subject of burned foods ...

[rooftop1000]

I don't have an exhaust fan but I do have a window right over the stove We used to jam a desk fan into it but now I have a basketball like pattern of Grease/Dirt on the screen. If the smoke gets too bad sometimes I crank up the forced hot air heat. My husband has banned the cooking of any duck products indoors after he almost choked to death on aerosolized duck fat.

tracey

[brucesw]

I noticed when I moved into this house (built 1968) 19 years ago that the exhaust fan over the cooktop was pretty useless. I thought it was just because it was so gummed up with grease but accidentally discovered one day the real problem. In the attic I almost lost my balance on the rafters and knocked the vent pipe from the kitchen to the roof off and when I went to reinstall it, discovered there was no hole through to the kitchen. The builder had installed an exhaust fan, cut a hole in the bottom of the cabinet, put in a vent pipe up to the ceiling, then another in the attic, but never cut a hole through the kitchen ceiling.

I ripped the exhaust fan out and started looking into replacements, which I needed anyway, but found lots of user reports online of inadequacy so I just blew it off. I didn't like the idea of a permanent fan in the kitchen window partly because it would probably mean the loss of lots of cool air in the our blistering summers. I did buy a clip-on fan at Home Depot or Lowe's, thinking I could clip it to the window frame or the nearby cabinet when needed but I could never get it positioned where it did anything but blow the smoke up against the wall so I gave up. Someone needs to make a fan mounted on a gooseneck that can be contorted into position when needed, moved out of the way when not.

When I have a smoke problem I have to open the back door, sometimes the front door, sometimes a dining room window, plus turn on the bathroom exhaust fan which actually helps a lot. I try to avoid cooking anything that is likely to create a lot of smoke until in the evening.

Re: The smoke alarm problem. I have a battery operated smoke alarm in the den, around the corner, which occasionally goes off. It's hanging above the fireplace, which i never use. I just climb up on the hearth and unhook it from the nail and place it on the writing table temporarily and it shuts up.

When I had my alarm system upgraded a few years ago, I had monitored smoke detectors installed but in the kitchen they put a heat detector. It is totally unaffected by smoke, only goes off if there's actually a fire; I don't think it would be affected by flaming something in a pan but I don't remember exactly what they told me about the threshold for setting it off.

I think most fire codes only require smoke detectors in the bedroom area and they are not recommended for kitchens or utility rooms. I don't know if there are unmonitored heat detectors available but that would be the solution to the smoke detector problem.

[kayb]

Old house + tiny kitchen = no exhaust fan. The stove, however, is less than four feet from the kitchen window, which I pop open and use a 5-inch fan on a clip bracket to vent stuff right outside, where it then draws every cat and dog in the neighborhood and makes my pug bark frantically because there are visitors on the back deck. I believe the pug is more annoying than the smoke alarm would be.

[Country]

Yeah, living in a 1906 house here, and even though our kitchen is a good size, the lack of exhaust means that cooking just about anything causes the smoke detector to go off. I would've taken the batteries out long ago, except that there are none: it's wired directly into the house electrical system, and there seems to be no way to shut it up other than to wave a towel at it.

Smoke detectors operated on house wiring, rather than batteries, have their own circuit breaker - that's not connected to anything else. At least in houses that are wired to electrical code. During smokey cooking the breaker can be turned off.

But, remember to turn the breaker back on when you're finished cooking.

[Smithy]

Ach. I share your pain. Our house has a good-sized kitchen with the stove on an interior wall. No exhaust fan. No reliable cross-ventilation. I get very tired of cleaning the gunk off the pots, pans and decorative doodads that sit atop the cabinets, but it has to be done a couple of times a year. Heavy-duty frying, or accidental smoke, odorize the house for days. We're planning to do a low-level kitchen remodeling and I very much want to install a proper ventilation system: a quiet, effective, range hood with exhaust to the outside world.

Options are limited without spending boucoup bucks. A vent pipe up through the ceiling will run through our bed upstairs. A vent down through the floor will hit the office desk. If I move the stove to an outside wall I'll have to relocate plumbing to accommodate the sink that lives there now. A vent sideways to the nearest wall seems the best answer, but then I'll sacrifice badly-needed cabinet space.

Friends (including my husband) keep assuring me that the recirculating-fan range hoods do an adequate job. I have my doubts. I suspect we'll end up continuing to do the majority of frying outside, on the deck, when the weather is fine.