You’ve been pouring cooking oil wrong your whole life

While TikTok started off as a dance-move central hub, it nowadays provides a lot of useful advice, alongside the dancing, of course.

And last year, a TikTok hack proved that we've been using cooking oil wrong our whole lives, having revealed a nifty little we can trick to pour with ease.

Yep, you may have thought that something as simple as pouring cooking oil couldn't be any easier, but in reality, it's one of the most nerve-wracking kitchen skills.

As you tentatively lean over the stove and slowly angle the oil towards the frying pan, you're aiming for a tablespoon or so just to coat the onions, aren't you? But either you end up decanting literally nothing, or - worse - pouring the entire bottle into the pan, onto the counter, and all down yourself.

Fear no more, as a new TikTok video has showed off a hack (or perhaps it's something we should have been doing all along?) to help with our oil-pouring needs.

Posted by MamaB, aka @chaldomom, the demonstration shows her opening a big bottle of cooking oil with the caption: ‘Like seriously TikTok is awesome for teaching me something I didn’t know'.

One of life's biggest battles. TikTok/@chaldomom

Ordinarily, when you get a bottle of oil, you’ll remove the screw top and be faced with an additional bit of plastic to pull from the inside. Many of us might just pull that sucker right off and go tally-ho with the oil. But we’re all fools, apparently, as we’re throwing away the key to sensible cooking.

If you take that same part, turn it upside down and place it back into the bottle – taking care not to let it drop inside, of course – it’ll control the volume of the oil and force it to trickle out, rather than trying to free-hand the usual pace it comes out.

Amazingly, the video quickly went viral, with one person asking: "Urgh!!! I should’ve known about this a long time ago, it would’ve been helpful. Why doesn’t it say that on the bottle?"

The creator replied: "I thought the same! I agree."

Elsewhere in the comments, there’s been debate over the use of oil on pasta all-together. "Frightening how many people in these comments don’t have a single idea how to cook pasta. More upsetting is how convinced they are that they’re right," one user wrote.

Hey presto! It’ll control the volume of the oil and force it to trickle out. TikTok/@chaldomom

Now, when I cook pasta, I always put a bit of oil in the water as the pasta boils. I don’t really know if that’s correct, it’s just what I’ve always known.

"That’s a nice way for your sauce to never stick to the pasta… that’s basic cooking to not put oil on pasta before the sauce is on," one user claimed.

"Once it’s cooked and done, I usually use olive oil so it doesn’t stick together. Not too much," MamaB later replied.

Regardless of the pasta wars, at least we’ll all pour the oil little more carefully now.