The life hack may sound like an ax murderer at the window, but apparently it’s a shortcut. Appealing, if suspect. No advice holds more authority than “never take no cut-offs,” coming, as it does, from a surviving member of the Donner party.
Still, life hacks relentlessly hack into the news feed, suggesting unlikely projects. To wit: Bundt-pan roasted chicken. It may seem obvious to the holder of a fully intact nonhacked life that the Bundt pan is intended solely to bake the prim tea cake. The life hacker counters that the pan is fitted with a center spike and that this spike can be repurposed as a skewer, in the rotisserie tradition.
Intriguing, if faulty, logic.
The Bundt pan can cradle a heap of potatoes, and its center spike is capable of supporting a chicken upright. But the post-roast result — actual life experience teaches — is a chicken crisped rotisserie-golden above the pan-line and soggy and pale below. Also sad potatoes wallowing in the depths. Not a success.
Rejecting the chicken hack, the cook turns to hacked chicken, classic of the Chinese kitchen. The recipe calls for slowly poaching chicken breast, then going after it with an ax, or cleaver. No shortcut, but entirely reliable.
