If you live in an apartment with a ventilation system that’s as weird as mine, you’re no stranger to the blaring siren of your smoke alarm. I don’t know about your place, but the smoke detector in my apartment can detect the faintest whiff of char arising from a burger or steak that I’m trying to sear at a high temperature; then, the alarm goes off and I’m forced to begin an elaborate dance of whisking the smoke away from the detector and out the window by wildly flapping a towel until the noise stops. Because this process is so exhausting and had become so routine, I was intrigued by the AirHood, a product that purports to act as a small, portable version of a range hood. I was curious to see whether this compact device could actually keep my kitchen from becoming a cave of fumes and haze.
The AirHood looks like a futuristic desk fan (it’s available in four retro-inspired colors; I went with classic black), but it’s a little bit more complicated than that. When you’re ready to cook, you simply place the AirHood on your counter near the burner that you’ll be cooking on. When you turn it on, the machine begins to suck in the smoky surrounding air and filters it through a system of carbon and stainless-steel screens, which trap smells and smoke before they can settle in your kitchen.
Before finding the AirHood, my research into exhaust solutions for apartments that aren’t outfitted with a real ventilation hood over the stove was very frustrating. Many folks online offered the same very obvious tip — simply open up a window and let the smoke out — but that isn’t an especially helpful option in my apartment’s shotgun-style layout. The ventilation is weird, and the smoke just hangs around in the kitchen.
When I first received the AirHood, I put it through its paces. My husband heated up our cast-iron griddle to make smashburgers, which, under normal circumstances, inevitably set off the smoke detector every single time. This time, though, the only thing I heard was the slightly loud whir of the AirHood’s fan as he smashed and flipped the patties for our burgers. I had similar success searing a ribeye steak at ripping hot temperatures, and breathed a sigh of relief when after burning a batch of sticky stir-fry sauce on the stove, I realized I could just pull the AirHood out of the cabinet and flip the switch to save my ears from another round of the smoke alarm.
In addition to smoke detector issues, I’m also not a fan of how cooking meat or spicy food on the stove results in the fragrance of my dinner sticking around well into the next morning.The AirHood does a pretty good job of reducing those residual smells, though it doesn’t totally eliminate them. I’d say it’s not as good at eliminating smells as it is at getting rid of smoke, but in my case, any improvement was a major one.
I also appreciate that the AirHood’s removable parts — filter, screen, and cover — are all dishwasher-safe, so you don’t have to worry about scrubbing all the grease that will inevitably accumulate from sucking up all those burger fumes.
It’s possible that the AirHood is best for a pretty specialized audience — people who live in apartments with crappy ventilation and a penchant for creating smoke in the kitchen — but for those who need it, it’s a massive improvement over explaining to the fire department for the 54th time that there’s no emergency, you just burned your salmon.
The AirHood is available for purchase here and at Amazon.
