TikTok's Viral Corn Hack Will Save You Time In The Kitchen
It's corn! Corn has had a moment on TikTok in the last month, thanks to corn's number one fan, Tariq, aka the "Corn Kid". Tariq became an overnight sensation after an interview of him praising the "big lump with knobs" posted by @doingthings went viral. The original interview was created by Recess Therapy, an account hosted by Julian Shapiro-Barnum where he talks to kids ages 2-9 about a wide range of topics, from climate change to corn. This interview with Tariq was then turned into a song by @schmoyoho, and, just like the Corn Kid said when he first tried corn with butter, "everything changed!"
As of September 6, the "It's Corn" song has been used in over 742K TikToks and the hashtag #cornkid has 284.3 million views. Naturally, this surplus of corn content on the internet led to lots of corn recipes from FoodTok-ers. This attention resurfaced the highly debated question: What is the best way to cut corn off the cob?
There are many ways to cut the juicy knobs off a cob of corn — standing it tall and running the knife down the sides, lying it flat, the double bowl method — but there is debate about which is the fastest, easiest, and cleanest way. Thankfully, TikTok comes to the rescue again, with a foolproof, no-knife corn hack that gets the kernels off the cob faster than you can say "corn on the cob."
A corntastic kernel-cutting method
This viral corn hack on TikTok involves a bundt cake pan, but instead of propping the corn on the center circle and using a knife to cut the kernels off, like this bundt pan corn method, you forcefully push the corn cob through the hole in the pan. In the video, the pan is upside down and halfway over the sink, so the bare cobs drop into the sink while the kernels are neatly collected in the bundt pan. In 45 seconds, the man in the video is able to completely de-kernel nine cobs of corn.
The woman narrating the video explains that her son, the de-kerneler, previously saw this trick on TikTok, which likely came from this viral TikTok that circulated last corn season. It shows the same upside-down bundt cake pan method, except the pan is perched on top of a bucket to collect the cobs after they're pushed through.
Though this may be the fastest and easiest way to de-kernel corn, it may not be the cleanest. While kernels don't go flying all over your kitchen, as they may using other methods, the TikTok shows the man's shirt saturated with liquid. "The only problem is, you're going to be covered with corn juice when you're done," his mother narrates. But if you've learned anything from the Corn Kid, you know that corn has the juice. Next time you make corn, grab an apron and try this fast, easy method. With the time you save, you can toss that apron in the wash and scroll through TikTok to find your next viral hack.