Multiple kitchen hacks posted to social media have become popular, and some have been shown not to work, not to be worth the effort, or to be dangerous.
[2] Kitchen hacks have been used throughout history to adapt to lack of equipment by those living in prisons, dorms, and under conditions of poverty or scarcity.
[2] NPR called Robinson Crusoe the "patron saint of the kitchen hack", because he managed to produce bread with none of the normally required tools, such as a plow, scythe, mill, or oven.
[2] During World War I, Salvation Army cooks in France used shell casings as rolling pins and helmets as deep fryers.
[2] Ruth Reichl jokingly claims she invented the microplane when, as a young impoverished new cook, she used a rasp to grate Parmesan.
[4] Food52 in 2016 called the term "out of control", noting that media companies, trying to benefit from the increase in Google searches for the term, had titled increasing numbers of posts as hacks, even when the content of the post did not qualify as ways to make kitchen tasks faster, easier, or more efficient but were instead simply recipes or gadgets.
[7] The Wall Street Journal reported in 2019 on multiple kitchen hacks that were either scientifically impossible, such as using warm milk to repair broken china, or were dangerous, such as cooking foil-wrapped bacon in an upright toaster, which toaster manufacturers said could cause fires or electrical shock.