The Simple TikTok Hack That Makes Cutting Large Produce A Breeze
Who among us hasn't skipped over a fresh ingredient from the produce aisle because cutting into it simply seems like too much work? If you've been cooking for a while, you've likely gotten an arm workout from trying to slice into thick veggies and fruits — eggplant, spaghetti squash, and melons can all be taxing to cut. Sharpening your knives can help when it comes to conquering cantaloupe, but you may still end up having to use several muscle groups to cut through the produce cleanly, and you can still walk away with uneven, jagged slices.
But even if you've given up on regularly including hard-to-slice produce in your diet, we've got an easy cutlery hack that is making the rounds on social media. And thankfully, it doesn't require you to buy a fancy tool or product. All you need to do is pick up a new way of working with your produce.
It's all in the motion
Rather than offering up typical advice like getting a sharper knife or working on your form, a recent TikTok video instead suggests adding extra motion to the process: rock your fruit or veggie back and forth. By rocking or rolling the produce on the cutting board, you take away some of the work from your chopping hand.
To use this hack, place the blade of your knife securely into the fruit or vegetable, and use the other hand to gently rock the produce. This helps the blade to gently work through the flesh of the produce and distributes force evenly. The reason for uneven slices is often because brute strength has been used in the cutting process, so you'll end up with nice, even slices (via TikTok).
If you're working with produce that isn't perfectly round like a watermelon or cantaloupe, that's okay; just rock the widest part of it, or slice it into different sections of equal diameter for easier rocking and rolling.