Happiness is discovering a simple garlic kitchen hack

We are an anxious bunch, us moderns. And no wonder, what with climate change and environmental Armageddon, flatlining economies all over the West, evil regimes bristling with nuclear warheads, ethical vacuums where there used to be greatness, sexism, racism, poverty… and on the list goes.

But we are, at the end of the day, also simple creatures – animals who like to eat and are easily transfixed by simple tasks. In particular, it seems, we like garlic. Enter the video of a girl peeling garlic in a novel way that went viral last week, its simple genius “blowing Twitter’s mind”, as one website put it.

The short clip was posted by Valentina Bachkarova-Lord, a Canadian video game designer who said her frequent preparation of Korean food had given her an insight into garlic-peeling. It shows her stabbing a clove in the garlic bulb with a knife so it simply pops out, before moving on to the next. She does it thrillingly quickly.

The efficiency and novelty of the approach is overwhelming and mesmerising. Chefs the world over heaped praise upon the unfussy and unmessy tactic. Home cooks the world over couldn’t believe the beauty and speed of the method.

Within hours, 443,000 people had liked the post. The responses were passionate. “OK. I don’t have garlic right now, but this settles my weekend plans. A culinary moonlanding,” tweeted one fan. Another moaned: “I’m 33 years old. I’ve lost no less than four years of my life peeling garlic. It’s too late for me. I hope younger generations can benefit.” Others expressed shock that their parents – Vietnemese, Jewish, Chinese, Indian – had allowed them to grow up without this knowledge.

Maybe the key to happiness is simpler than we all thought: a nifty new way to add flavour in the kitchen.