Why Bobby Flay Isn't Sure About This TikTok Straining Hack

Here's an unproven, although almost certainly 100 percent true, theory: Food Network star and cat-food entrepreneur, Bobby Flay has made a lot of pasta in his life, particularly after he hung out with Giada Pamela De Laurentiis in Italy. Take, for example, the spaghetti squash dish Flay made with Rachael Ray (via Instagram) or that spaghetti with Zucchini and Shishito Pepper Pesto that Flay described on The Gram as a "total inspiration from my memories on the Amalfi Coast." Also, Today once profiled Flay's ragù of beef and red wine on fresh fettuccini. There you have it: the chef knows a thing or two about noodles. 

This brings us to our second hypothesis: Bobby Flay is a master of strainers. Barring the outside possibility that the chef has hired someone to do it for him, Flay must have strained a whole lot of pasta water in his career. You can trust him, then, when he weighs in on TikTok's straining hacks. Drew Barrymore recently asked Flay what he thought about a viral hack: one that seeks to alleviate the effort involved in pasta straining by placing a mesh strainer on top of a pot full of pasta and using the strainer as a de facto lid to pour the pasta water out (via Youtube). This is what Flay had to say.

The celebrity chef didn't have to think twice. "I'm not into it," Bobby Flay told Drew Barrymore of TikTok's latest straining hack, with a shake of his head (via Youtube). Mainly, that's because Flay needs to have control over the things that he cooks. "Once you cover it and you start pouring out the water, there is a possibility, I think, that the hot water can go places you don't want it to go ... and I can't really see the hot water coming out from under the strainer." Once more, in case you didn't get the message, Bobby Flay doesn't like it: "I want to see where my hot water is going at all times." 

So there you have it. Bobby Flay said no to TikTok. To shake things up, Drew Barrymore posted his disagreement to Twitter. Twitter, for the record, "so agrees."