The Sauce Packet 'Trick' That Proves Not All Hacks Are Useful
The internet is home to many excellent food hacks that can allow you access to the best secret menu items and the most convenient cooking strategies among other things. Of course, not all hacks are winners, with one TikTok trick in particular appearing to be fairly useless at best, and a bit unsanitary at worst.
The trick in question focuses on a method for ensuring all of your sauce or salad dressing is squeezed out of the packet without leaving a molecule of flavor behind. In order to achieve this hack, you must be eating a salad, or some other food served in a lidded bowl. The hack calls for closing the lid over the bottom end of the packet after tearing the other side open and pulling it out, utilizing the force of the plastic container to pinch all of the dressing into the awaiting food.
At first glance, the hack seems to do what it sets out to do, with the TikToker posting the trend giving an enthusiastic thumbs up alongside an "Approved" stamp. However, a bit of digging quickly reveals the fatal flaws in this ultimately useless hack.
The problem with the sauce packet trick
As the top comment of the video is quick to point out, this hack runs the risk of being highly unsanitary. A TikTok commenter, who claims to work at Chick-fil-A, wrote, "Idk I worked at CFA and we be dropping them things on the floor all the time." Other comments agreed, with some questioning whether the packet had been thoroughly washed before the video's creator made the decision to place the packet directly on their food.
@fastgoodcuisine FOOD HACK SAUCE 🥗 Pourquoi on nous l'a pas dit plus tôt ? 😭 Tu connaissais déjà cette technique toi ? #LearnOnTikTok #lifehack #foodhack #hack
Additionally, this hack seems to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. Many people have complained over the years about the difficulty of extracting the last bits of toothpaste from the tube, though it's difficult to recall hearing the same complaints about fast food sauce packets. Most restaurants give away extra packets for free.
Some commenters were quick to point out that this trick could just as easily be accomplished with a fork, or better yet, squeezing the packet by hand, without dumping one large glob of sauce onto a singular spot within the meal, as the video seems to demonstrate. At the end of the day, the sauce packet food hack is just not that useful, but we'll be sure to keep an eye out for other time-saving hacks in the future.