Anyone who’s eaten meat knows there are parts of whatever cut of meat you choose that are not pleasant. It can be fat, gristle, or, in the case of chicken, tendons. While tendons become thinner during the cooking process, they can still be an annoyance, whether it’s from the texture or being stuck in your teeth. Additionally, chicken tendons can be a choking hazard for small children. Now, TikTok’s @raising_krazies, Mandy Klentz, has an easy hack to remove them from your chicken breasts. (1, 2)
The TikTik Tendon Hack
At the time of this writing, the evening of June 29th, 2020, Klentz’s video had a whopping 4.3 million views, 683 thousand likes, and almost ten thousand comments. That’s a lot of attention!
Her chicken tendon removal trick is as simple as the interest around it is enormous.
To Remove The Tendon, Use The Following Steps:
- Find the small nub at the edge of the meat.
- Put the nub between the tongs of the fork.
- Push down on the fork, so enough of the tendon nub sticks through the tongs.
- Grab the tendon nub with a paper towel.
- Hold the nub securely while pulling down hard with the fork.
- The tendon will slide right out. (2)
Notes About Tendon Removal
If the chicken tendon runs right through the meat, like the one pictured in the video, removing the tendon may cause the meat to fall apart. If you’re sectioning up the chicken at some point–say, for use in a salad or stir-fry–this may not be an issue for you. However, if you’d like your cut of chicken to remain in one piece, consider leaving the tendon in. As mentioned before, it often isn’t a problem to eat, and can be removed by an individual after cooking. Just cut your meat lengthwise and separate the tendon fibers out with a fork. (1, 2)
@Raising_Krazies’s Channel
Klenrz’s channel has only 15 videos–but none of them have quite the view count that the chicken tendon hack has. The least viewed one has almost 7 thousand views, and the second-most viewed one (with the chicken being first) has over 175 thousand. That one boasts a video caption: “Moms after one month of quarantine with all their kids home 24-7.”
Although she follows only 70 people, she boasts a follower count of over 22.3 thousand, and 719.5 thousand likes. (3)
@raising_kraziesBest cooking hack ever! ##cookinghacks ##tiktokmoms ##itsdinnertime ##cookingontiktok ##lifehack ##momsoftiktok ##whatsfordinner ##waitforit ##fyp
What TikTok Is
Maybe you aren’t familiar with TikTok. It’s a hugely popular social media app, which hosts short videos. For those of you who would be considered “older millennials”, you might think of Vine, the “original” short video app. Owned by the parent company behind Twitter, Vine was launched in 2012 and shut down in 2016. But TikTok may be bigger than Vine ever was. As of January 23, 2020, TikTok had over 1.5 billion downloads. It’s also home to influencers and TikTok celebrities, who do prank videos, skits, and viral challenges. In September 2017, ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, released the app under its current moniker–it had been released to the Chinese market under the name Douyin a year previously. As of January 2020, ByteDance was worth about $75 billon. (4, 5)
