I love cooking fresh dinners for my boys every night, but I do hate the smell that it often leaves on my hands all night long! When I make my Chicken Curry and Chilli Con Carne, I have to chop up both onion and garlic, which really lingers on your fingers, and I am smelling it until the next morning because the soap I normally use just masks the smell for a short while and doesn't remove the smell at all. So when I saw this new Palmolive soap in Boots on a half price offer, I thought it would be worth a go.

Palmolive Odour Neutralisng Liquid Handwash is a new soap in the Palmolive brand, which is made by the Colgate group. It claims to be able to not only clean your hands after preparing food, but neutralise the odours that strong smelling food can leave on your hands, such as onions, garlic and even fish. It contains lime extract which counteracts the strong food smells, and also has a natural antibacterial agent which keeps your hands germ free - brilliant! I thought this sounded pretty good, and looked forward to trying it out that night as I knew I was making a Curry, so I was hoping for some magic results!

The handwash comes in the clear plastic bottle that all Palmolive Liquid soaps come in, with a white pump dispenser on the top. This makes the product nice and easy to use when your hands are dripping wet and stop nasty spillages all over the kitchen worktop. The handwash itself is a minty green colour, with a strong lime scent to it. The bottle is pretty basic looking, with a green background to enhance the colour of the soap, and a small picture on the front. The words "Odour Neutralising" are quite prominent under the Palmolive logo, so it's easy to distinguish this soap from other similar soaps.

Okay, so I made sure that my hands were smell free before I started preparing my dinner so that I can get a good test for this soap! I chopped up my onion and 2 cloves of garlic as usual for my dinner, and indeed the smell was very strong on my hands. So over to the sink I went, armed with my little green bottle of soap. I wet my hands and pressed the pump dispenser once, which gave me a good sized blob on the palm of my hand. I rubbed them together, making sure to clean my fingertips thoroughly. The soap made quite a good lather and the lime smell was coming through quite strongly. I rinsed off with warm water and dried my hands on a clean tea towel.

Straight away I had a smell to see if I could detect any food smells, and the first thing I smelt was....Lime! It was quite strong over all of my hands, but not unplesantly so. It smelt nice and fresh, but when I sniffed REALLY hard, I could detect undercurrents of garlic, although they were minimal. I was pretty pleased as the smell was good, the food smells were barely there (you certainly couldn't smell them on normal inhaling) and my hands felt nice and clean. Hours later, just before bed, I smelt my hands again. The lime smell had definitely worn off almost completely, and I could smell hints of onion and garlic, but not that strong, and certainly not bad.

I decided to try again the next time I cooked a Chilli Con Carne, a few days later. With the fresh smell of garlic and onion on my hands again, I decided to try a little more soap this time. I used 2 squirts instead of one, which really worked into a bubbly lather, much more so than last time, and rinsed again. The lime smell was much better this time, and I really couldn't detect any food smells on my hands at all, which was impressive! Again I smelt my hands later that evening and the smell was pretty much non-existent. Again if you sniffed super hard, you could tell something was there, but to normal breathing there was nothing, the soap had indeed neutralised the smell!

As well as making the awful smell disappear, the soap had left my hands feeling quite soft and clean. The lime smell is very fresh and so makes you feel nice and clean straight away, but it also worked well with my skin too and didn't dry out my hands at all, which is handy. I think it is definitely a great product to have in your kitchen, it does do its job although you need a few squirts to really minimise the food smells on your hands. It isn't drying, it's very fresh, and I think the bottle will last you a good a while!

The soap comes in a plastic 300ml bottle, and is currently on offer in Boots for just 84p, with a normal selling price of £1.69. To be honest I'd definitely pay full price for this, as its a lovely handwash and anything which stops the garlic-fingers is worth its money for me! Available from most supermarkets and chemists.

For more information on other Palmolive products, see their website: http://www.colgate.co.uk/app/Colgate/UK/HomePage.c vsp.

Thank you for reading!