Stop Over-Pouring Olive Oil With One Simple Hack

So, you poured out too much olive oil. Hoping only to spill a few drops for a light vegetable saute, you instead poured enough to deep fry some milk. And it's not as though you can put that extra liquid back into the bottle. So, it seems, you've just wasted a good bit of culinary liquid gold. But did you know that there is an easy way to prevent overpouring your prized olive oil? Better still, the solution is found right in your bottle's cap.

As it turns out, you can use the removable pull tab attached to your cap as a plunger to help control the pour. Simply remove the tab, flip it over, and put it back in your bottle's top. This will help prevent over-pouring by controlling the liquid flow from the bottle. This is because the pull cap, when reversed and placed on the top of your bottle, creates a smaller, ring-shaped opening that allows you to drizzle, rather than pour. This hack also circumvents the need for extra kitchen gear, such as a drizzle bottle which, while useful, does come at a cost. So the pull tab hack is not only easy but also easy on your wallet.

You're not wrong if you find this hack to be a bit mindblowing. Many home cooks believe that the plastic pull tab that comes attached to bottles of olive oil is simply a safety measure, similar to plastic wrap, meant to keep out outside contaminants and prevent premature spoilage. And this is a part of the ring cap's function. The plastic pull tab protects against outside contamination by creating a seal that keeps your bottle fresh. Olive oil does begin to turn stale over time, and oxidation can cause your olive oil to go from fresh to stale. The pull tab, before being removed from the cap, keeps oxygen from seeping into your bottle.

The ingenious pull-cap trick was posted to TikTok and caused an uproar among users of the platform who were unaware of the ring tab's double function. The hack is surprising enough that thousands of people have chimed in already.

@luckybasnet00

Why do I learn everything on tiktok 😂#foryoupage #nepalitiktok #lifehacks #nepalitiktoker #fyp

♬ original sound – 💫Lucky💫

One TikToker asked, "am I even breathing right?" While another commenter exclaimed, "[I] learn more on TikTok than [I] ever did at school". Of course, it's not as though these instructions are explicitly labeled on the bottle. Rather, it's been up to online sleuths and crafty TikTokers to spread the gospel of the inverted ring cap. So, next time you buy a bottle of olive oil, you might want to heed the internet's advice and save the tab.