It lingers in the grease......clean up any spilled grease and grease in stoves and vent fans and the odor is gone.
My daughter bought a house which had belonged to an Indian family and the agent warned about the smell...
An sos pad, some degreaser and a bit of hard work and the smell was gone....but the vinyl floor in front of the cooktop was permenantly stained.
Linda C

Several ways:

1. A powerful exhaust system vented to outside near your stove.

2. An activated charcoal sir filtering device turned on while you are cooking.

3. Sell your house to an Indian family [ Just kidding :-) ]

dcarch

See if the restaurant does take-out.

My neighbors bought a house that had an Indian food smell for a seriously discounted price (because of the smell) and 8 years later, after completely ripping out everything to the studs and sub-fkoor.... the smell still lingers.

Alexa

We cook curry dishes all of the time -- at least weekly. I don't think it lingers anymore than frying bacon does. The curry smells the day we cook it, but using the vent on our cooktop takes care of the odor. If it is really strong I will open the windows for a while. Bacon seems to smell all day long when we cook it, so I have to do the same for it. We cook curry more than we do bacon.

Before I "knew" that I liked curry dishes (over 20 years ago) I worked at a place with several Indian employees. They all brought their lunch everyday and microwaved it at 11:30. The entire place would smell like curry for the rest of the afternoon, but by the next morning the smell would be gone (until 11:30 when they microwaved again). I hated the smell so I always tried to eat before them. Now, I would give anything to still work with them because they offered to share their lunch with me everyday and I turned my nose up at it. I love and crave curry dishes now.

Now, I would give anything to still work with them because they offered to share their lunch with me everyday and I turned my nose up at it.

A few years ago I was doing a contract thing involving machine calibration in one of our pulp and paper mills. I often had to go to the engineer's home, if he wasn't on site, to sign off and discuss stuff.

I quickly learned to arrive just before lunch or just before dinner.

The things his wife and kids fed me and/or sent me home with sustain me to this day.

I've seen some of it on menus but most of it remains unidentifiable to me other than "OMG, this is so good!"

The drive home is over a mountain pass, sneaky road and reaching into a paper sack for a bite of something or another almost sent me off the road a couple of time. Gosh, they knew heat! The good kind, the kind that sneaks up on you and then unfolds in all its glory, leaving you gasping and wondering how you could possibly survive even while you reached for more.

Mrs.M and the kids quickly learned to sample slowly when I arrived home. Sometimes I couldn't even smooch my wife!

She complained I was too hot. Can you beat that?

Now I want some. Good thing I live around the corner from an Indian restaurant.

I bought some asafetida from a spice shop but haven't had the courage to use it.

dlynn - you may be right that the bacon smell lingers longer, but at least it smell GOOD! There is nothing appealing about the smell of old curry. LOL!

Alexa - who cooked off a bazillion lbs of bacon this morning

I was just wondering/worrying about the same thing. We had butter chicken last night. Despite cleaning and venting, my house still smells this morning. Fortunately, the food is worth it. I only cook it about once a month and don't seem to have any on going problems. And I have teenage daughters that don't hesitate to tell me when things are offending their delicate sensibilities!

I babysat for an Indian family for years and their house did not smell like curry. Like Linda says, the smell is picked up in grease, and that goes for ANY cooking smells, I've smelled lots of other strong odors in kitchens that had a grease build up. You can't wipe that stuff away, you have to scrub. And I imagine you can't paint over it either. I scrubbed and scrubbed to get a cigarette smell out of an apartment I once lived in. Everything was covered in a film of yellow smoke grime. Soot from high heat cooking builds up too. I would suggest if you manage the grease in your kitchen, you won't have a lingering smell problem. If you don't, you'll have a problem no matter what ethnic style you cook.

LOL! Dcarch, I think tip #3 would be the most logical solution :)

Thanks for the advice everyone. I guess it doesn't really sound like there's a foolproof solution for me. My exhaust fan doesn't seem to be very powerful, and if the smell will just get trapped up there anyways, that's no good. Still, maybe it's more of a build-up issue, so if I only cook it once in a while, vent the kitchen well, and clean up the grease really well afterwards, it may not be a problem.

Sorry Lpink, I didn't see you post before I did. I think what you're saying, though, just confirms my suspicions, so I really appreciate the advice.

Actually, I like the smell of curry so it doesn't bother me if the smell lingers.

Ann

I cook with curry frequently and the smell doesn't linger. It's day-old fish smell I can't stand. Korean families have been known to put a separate kimchi fridge in the garage lest their home smell 24/7 of kimchi (think pungently spiced sauerkraut).

I think a house doesn't take on the food odor unless you are using it 3 meals a day, every day. Authentic Indian recipes call for grinding your own spices and cooking the spices in ghee or oil before using them. That probably adds to the lingering effect.

I gotta say I turned down a house I loved when I moved here because the house smelled like dusty peanut oil and curry - it was ingrained in the wallpaper and the sheetrock - even in a 25x20 great room with a vaulted ceiling was almost cloying.

I try to confine my curry to milder varieties (I buy them at a spice market in Marigot St Martin) and tend towards dishes where its combined with coconut milk. And I always run the hood fan. DH is a giant lingering-odor PITA - always fun...

I have been cooking Indian foods for years and have never had a problem. Of course, I am not cooking three meals a day and snacks for a large family, either. If mom stays home (or if grandma lives with the family) that is what the house is subjected to. Many of the snack foods and some of the traditional breads are deep fried ghee is used quite a bit as well, and if the residue isn't cleaned thoroughly, well, rancid butter and oil have truly foul odors.

I suppose Indian housewives are just like American housewives...cleaning is more important to some than others.

One thing to be careful of is turmeric. It can leave a bright yellow stain on some surfaces. Mostly, it can be bleached out, but bleach is also hard on some surfaces so it's better to just be careful with it. If you've got a kid with braces, the rubber band strip that links the brackets together holds the color as well...very attractive. :P

I cook a lot of strong-smelling foods, too, including lots of curry and fish, and I never even thought about lingering smells in the house. Nobody has ever mentioned it. Yes, we have drapes, carpet and wallpaper.

I LOVE entertaining, cooking and eating, and wouldn't live my life without it for the sake of a future house sale. That's like painting everything neutral beige so as not to offend possible buyers in 2020! In fact, I've cooked plenty of curry and then sold the house in the past. If, when we do sell this house, a few people sniff and say "Eww," they just won't make an offer, just as Sands99 didn't on a house she liked.

Cook with curry, and enjoy it. It's good for you! I want some of what Metaxa took home.

Sherry

Thanks everyone! It wouldn't be such a big deal except that we don't plan on staying in our house even two more years, and I don't want to sell way under value simply because I wanted to experiment a bit in the kitchen!

That being said, it doesn't sound like it'll be a big deal unless I switch over to an all-Indian diet and refuse to clean my kitchen. I can't wait to try out some new recipes!

This thread has made me chuckle. It's another of those cultural differences - you're much more sensitive about smells in your homes than europeans. For example, my husband paid me a complement this week-end - not only had I made the whole house smell fragrant but the neighbourhood too! That made him a very happy chappy!

If the stove is not on an outside wall, the only way to vent the hood to the outdoors is to give up an enormous amount of cabinet space. So many people accept the trade-off of less effective venting.

I love the smell of curry in my house. It usually hangs around for 24 hours and then is not noticeable.

And like islay_corbel says, cooking odors that linger don't seem to bother folks here. Although I have to admit when I first arrived in Spain, the strong smells of frying garlic and olive oil together with prawns on a hot grill, wafting down the streets used to turn my stomach a little. Now I'm accustomed to and love those smells.

I remember one time when I returned to Canada for a holiday and started frying garlic Spanish style in my brother's kitchen he was not amused LOL.

SharonCb