If you like to cook, you know that it’s very helpful to have the correct equipment in your kitchen. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to own expensive kitchen gadgets like food processors and stand mixers; although, depending on what you’re making, these small appliances can be very useful. It is; however, necessary to own a few very basic essentials.

When we think of bare minimum kitchen gadgets, things like a quality knife and a cutting board come to mind. Many recipes require chopped, diced or sliced ingredients. While a food processor can do this in a flash, for many home chefs, a knife and cutting board is all that’s required.

You probably own a cutting board. You probably even use it on a regular basis. Many, but not all cutting boards have a hole on one side.

We always thought this hole was a handle. It kind of looks like a handle, doesn’t it? Our hand fits through it easily, and it kind of makes sense that a cutting board would come with a convenient place to hold it when you’re washing it. We even thought that the hole would make it convenient to hang the cutting board up when we’re not using it.

Let’s be honest though. We use our cutting board a lot, so it’s almost always a permanent resident on our kitchen counter.

We’re not saying that the hole in the cutting board can’t be used as a handle or a place to hang it up, but it turns out that it has an even more important, dare we say, life-changing purpose. Yes. We really have been using our cutting board wrong.

There’s a YouTube video that has completely changed the way we use our cutting board. In the past, we would chop, dice or slice and then have to figure out how to get all those little pieces into the bowl or pan without dropping any on the floor or counter. It’s easier said than done…until now.

The secret has been there the entire time, but we never realized it. The hole is not there just as a handle. It’s a convenient way to transfer ingredients off of the cutting board. It’s big enough that our chopped, diced, sliced ingredients can fit through it, but it’s small enough that when we push them through it and into a bowl or pan below, they’re not going to fall onto the floor or counter.

No mess. No coordination needed. It really couldn’t be easier.

Watch the video below to see this clever hack along with 29 other smart kitchen tips.

Do you own a cutting board with a hole in it? Did you think the hole was a handle or was that just us?