‘Al dente please’ – there’s a lad cooking spaghetti in his hot water bottle on TikTok

I’ve seen it all now.

We’ve heard tell of people in compromising situations using their hot water bottle water for a cup of tea, or, as one person hauntingly retold in a TikTok comment, once being so hungover that they drank directly out of one.

Tough times – times when there simply isn’t another option. We relate. We sympathise.

However, opting to prepare spaghetti in a hot water bottle rather than… you know, the more traditional saucepan, is something that’s hard to get one’s head around.

TikTok user Barney Stories has shared a video of himself preparing pasta in a hot water bottle, describing it as “absolutely fantastic” and “al dente”.

It’s hard to know where to start. First of all, why is there so much water for just a few strands of spaghetti? What about the aul trick of using as little water as possible, so that you can call upon its starchiness for use in the sauce later on?

Secondly, Barney mentions using a tweezer to retrieve the spaghetti that doesn’t come out of the hot water bottle with ease – can that actually work? I know it’s al dente but it’d want to be as stiff as a twig to be graspable by tweezer, surely.

Finally, if the spaghetti was cooked ‘overnight’ as Barney says, how ‘al dente’ can it really be?

Maybe Barney’s just trolling us, and laughing away at our bewilderment. Maybe spaghetti genuinely is better out of a hot water bottle. I’ll reserve official judgement until I’ve tried it for myself – might have to draw the line at preparing the bolognese in there though.

Header image via TikTok/@barneystoriesok

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