 Do you like summer? Yes! Hi, I'm Heather. I'm the editorial director of the Spruce Eats, and today we're doing summer hacks. As always on Hack Chat, I'm gonna try out the hacks. I'm gonna rate them on a scale of one to five for helpfulness and easiness, and just overall thumbs up or thumbs down. Let's do it. Cold beer, summertime. Don't have a bottle opener. What do you do? I'm gonna watch this video. It's the first time I've ever seen it. He folds it. He folds it again. So you take this piece of paper, fold it in half. Then you fold it in half again. Then you fold it in half one more time. Then you fold it in half one more time. Then you fold that in half this way the long way. There's a lot of instructions that involve folding it in half. And so then you have like this sort of spine right here. Oh, wait a second. This is actually, I broke the seal and I feel I'm super hopeful that this is actually gonna work. Like I've clearly made some headway. Okay. Yes! So that totally worked. I did it. I just give it a thumbs up. All right, so it worked the first time. I just, I don't want this to not work the second time. Okay, so let's rate this right now. Here's, this is my second try. For helpfulness, it's a four divided by two because it was a four for the first one and it was a zero for the second one. So I would say for helpfulness, it's a two. To make the tool itself is extremely easy. So, easiness for making the tool, five. For using the tool, I give it like a one. If I divide those in half, five plus one. Did I just use a calculator? It's a three, it's a three for easiness. I'd rather have like four failures if I could just have the feeling of elation of just like that sound of opening the beer. It really was extremely exciting. Thumbs up. So one of the best things about Sahara's corn on the cob, in my opinion, but it's a pain in the neck to get all the silk off of here. What I'm gonna do is I'm going to take a new corn, put it in the microwave for two minutes and then this is the trick. You find the widest part of the corn. Cutting it, this is a sharp knife. That's really cool. That was so easy and so not messy. I have nothing to clean. Yeah. This is like literally the definition of instant satisfaction. On a scale of one to five for helpfulness, five for easiness, five. Definitely do this. I feel like a salesperson for this hack. I might go on the road with it. You know, everybody has the friend who says they're gonna bring the guacamole, but then they just bring the guacamole supplies and then what do you do? You're just at the picnic and you have a bunch of avocados. So this hack is making avocado into guacamole using only a bag and some plastic utensils that somebody else brought. We're just gonna make maybe a two avocado guac. I'm gonna squeeze this in here. No, don't do that next time. Just use the spoon. Let's add lime juice, cilantro, garlic, salt, because your friend brought a salt seller but didn't bother to make the guacamole. All right, so this is what we made. Would you care for some guacamole? Say somebody is really hungry and says yes or they don't wanna hurt your feelings. I'm gonna just do it. I'm gonna demo this. So I have taken some guacamole but also I have smeared a lot of guacamole in my hands. It tastes very good. No thanks to being in the bag. I wanna invite you to a picnic. We're gonna have watermelon. We're gonna have corn on the cob. We're gonna have every kind of your favorite chip and we're gonna have your favorite guacamole in a bag. It starts at around four, but you can get there whenever you want. For helpfulness, I rated a zero. Easiness, one? Yeah, I don't know. I just need a moment of silence. I give it a thumbs down. So a long time ago, like maybe 15 years ago, I saw somebody do this in the salad bar of the store where I worked and I just couldn't even believe my eyes. So this was like maybe one of the first times I ever really fell in love with a hack. If you have to cut a whole bunch of these for a salad, I don't know, it just gets a little boring. Instead, you have container lids. You have big ones, you have small ones. I have these, I have a whole bunch of these. You put them here, line them up, make them kind of flat, put the other top on and then put your knife through and then you just cut them all at the same time. So that's it, you're done. Now you have a cherry tomato salad. Helpfulness, it's a five. Easiness, it's a five. Overall, thumbs up. This next hack is about iced coffee, but not just any iced coffee. This is about iced. This is the Starbucks hack that everybody's seen. Liquid. And then it turned into a frozen thing. It really did. You take a frappuccino, this is a vanilla flavored, put in the freezer and then it just turns into the frappuccino that you'd get at Starbucks. Same texture, same slushy iciness. Let's see if it works. I actually put two in there, put one in last night. So really, it's not the one that I just put in there. So I'm gonna go see it. This appears to be a frozen block of ice. Was I supposed to put it in for a certain amount of time? I'm a little crestfallen because I think, I'm sorry, I'm just like, I'm racking my brain to be like, did I do it wrong? Okay, so I found a call number on here. Hi, I have purchased a frappuccino from a store. It's a vanilla frappuccino and I'm curious about whether you can freeze it. I've seen on TikToks that you can freeze it and then it turns into the frappuccino that you get from a Starbucks. Yeah, the glass bottle ones. Okay, so don't freeze it more than three hours or else the bottle could explode. And then do you know, so I froze it but it turned into like a solid rock. Okay, so you think that the time is probably pretty important to get the right texture. Look at this. Look, it is actually a matter of timing. Okay, I'm gonna shake it up. Yeah, look at it. It is semi-frozen, sort of like a frappuccino. Yum. I am super excited about this one because it's aesthetically very pleasing. Here's what happens in this hack. Roll it. I'm crushing some of the chips at the bottom. There's like a quarter cup of chip dust at the bottom. Nice little collar. And then the trick here is you go in. My hands are clean. I'm pretty pleased with this but let's try another kind. Let's try some popcorn. This is fun because it's like the popcorn is rising to meet you. It's sort of like a push pop but for chips. Look, this actually looks like somebody styled it. You know, if I rate this, I give it a big thumbs up. This is a five for helpfulness. It's really just a three for easiness because I did crush the bottom ring of chips in there and it takes a little while but it's just so worth it. It's really pretty. Sometimes I just have to wrap my mind around why. Like why this needed to be invented because the hotdog is already kind of a miraculous feat. Basically the idea is you skewer it and then you use the skewer as a guide. I am not proud of this. I wanna get the spirals closer together. According to all reports, the reason why I'm doing this is because crevices can soak up more of the condiments that you put on here. Okay, so this one's my second one. We're gonna just see if they get better and better as we go along. So then what you do is you take it out and here you have like a swirly guy. So there's three dogs here. We're gonna cook them all up. So I wanna talk about just like what happened here. The edges are crispy. I think they're crispy on the inside. So maybe we've increased the crispy areas a little bit. Now I don't have a grill because I live in an apartment but I'd love to try the sound on a grill. Do you want me to try it out? Tell me in the comments below. There's gonna be like more mustard, more ketchup in every single bite. The nooks and the crannies are in there. So what's happening right now is, you know when you normally bite a hot dog and you get that like snap and then you have like a little piece of a hot dog to chew. When you bite this, you get like a teeny weeny skinny little thing and nothing snaps. So it almost feels like, did you really even bite the hot dog? It's really not as satisfying. For helpfulness I would just, I'm gonna give it a two. It's not helpful. For easiness, I struggled. I just couldn't get it straight. I felt a little bit bad about myself. For easiness I'm gonna give it a two. Unfortunately it's just like no, don't do it to a hot dog. Don't do it. Next summer hack, watermelons. They're kind of a pain in the neck to cut. Except for if you do this. Cut off the end. Cut off the other end. Turn it on the side. Cut off the rind. So you need a knife that's big. Don't use a teeny weeny knife. Here's the moment that we've all been waiting for. Could have done a better job on the rind, but next time. Mm-hmm. I don't know what's not to like. If I really wanted to look like I knew what I was doing I wouldn't have included this piece. I don't want somebody at my party to get this piece. I'll be embarrassed by that. So cutting the watermelon into long spears and flipping it over into a bowl. A helpfulness rating is pretty helpful because then it's pretty easy to grab and then you don't have a bunch of rind. You don't get it like on the sides of your cheeks when you bite it. This technique I give a four. Easiness, it's like a four because there was like a little moment of fear when I was tipping it into the bowl. I give it a thumbs up. We tried so many summer hacks today in preparation for summer. This is my least favorite hack. Guacamole in a bag is a bad idea. My favorite, favorite hack from today is the corn on the cob in the microwave. Two minutes later, you're eating fresh, juicy, buttery corn on the cob and there's no corn silk anywhere. You know, the hack that really is like a surprise to me because it didn't really work very well the second time. And I just didn't care because it was so much fun when it did work. It just made me really happy. So not every hack has to be, you know, 100% sure fire in order to be a good hack. Weirdest hack, let's just do it, is this guy. Did you like this video? Did you learn anything in hacks? I did. I learned how to make a beer bottle. I didn't learn how to make a beer bottle. That would have been amazing. Tell me about your hacks, I'll try them out. For more hack chat, like this video and subscribe to The Spruce Eats. Have a nice summer.