This Is the Best Reason to Keep Champagne Corks.

For some reason, I have a Moon Pie branded tin full of old wine corks I’ve been collecting over the years. I don’t know why I save them; all they do is remind me that I spent a decent amount of money on mid-range wine, but I can’t let them go. (It might be tempting to think I’m saving them for some vineyard mom art project, but that’s not true either; I don’t even have a glue gun.)

But thanks to TikTok, I’ve found a reason to justify a small part of my habit of saving corks: I can use corks to protect my delicate fingers.

In this video , TikTok user Andrew from @abouttoeat shared a trick he learned while filming the show Worth It : Instead of a kitchen towel or oven mitt to grab the hot metal pot or pot lid, he sticks a sparkling wine cork under the handle. The cork acts as an insulator, allowing Andrew to lift the lid without burning his fingers.

I tested this little trick with several different corks – as I mentioned, I have a lot of them – and found that champagne and sparkling wine corks work much better than standard straight-edged corks. Non-carbonated corks were too thin, didn’t hold well, and didn’t stay under the handle. (They just slid and rolled, which made lifting the lid without touching it quite a challenge.)

Judging by the comments, this little hack is nothing new, especially in the former USSR, where it was used by countless Balkan grandmothers for generations. According to more comments, it’s stupid and “they should just make a pen out of cork” but it sounds annoying to clean and looks like something Andrew has no control over. But until this is sorted out, you will have to resort to traffic jams. (Thank God I saved many.)