You've Been Hitting Your Ketchup Bottles Wrong This Whole Time

There are countless ways to get those last few drops of ketchup out of the bottle and onto your burger — and we all seem to have our own "ketchup-releasing personality." Some of us shake the bottle furiously, some of us give the bottle one solid whack, and others tap the bottle gently until ketchup comes out. Sadly, though, it looks like almost all of us who (literally) hit the bottle are doing ourselves a serious disservice.

According to Mirror Online, there's a Heinz-approved way to smack your ketchup bottle and actually get ketchup out, and it's likely that not enough of us use it. While many of us may think that tapping the bottom of the bottle repeatedly will serve us well, the popular condiment company suggests a different approach. Tapping the bottle on the neck instead of on its base will net you more ketchup for your burger or hot dog — and you may also waste less ketchup when you're running low.

We totally get why it may be tempting to tap the bottom of your ketchup bottle — theoretically, if you apply force, gravity should do its thing and move all of that ketchup down towards the opening of the bottle. But there's solid reasoning on why you should hit the neck of your ketchup bottle instead — and Heinz even has a trick to help you.

A Heinz spokesperson told Today that it's more effective to tap your ketchup bottle on the neck because it's where the bottle funnels into the opening. If your ketchup is in a traditional bottle, tapping the spot where the bottle narrows will move the ketchup that's stuck in the neck down to the lid, where you can easily access it. There's even a specific spot to help you remember where to tap if you use Heinz ketchup: right where that iconic "57" is stickered onto the bottle. Thank goodness that Heinz has a method to help us with those tricky last bits of ketchup so we can stop the "smacking-tapping-shaking" trial-and-error process.

Ketchup bottles come in all shapes and sizes nowadays, and not every bottle shape has such a prominent neck. Tapping the ketchup bottle near the neck works well on an original Heinz bottle, but it may not be effective on a bottle with a differently-shaped or less clear neck.

The good news is that there's still an easy way to get the ketchup out of your bottles (and avoid another common ketchup pitfall at the same time). In a YouTube video, Food Network star Alton Brown suggests cutting off the upper half of an egg carton and using the lower portion to store your condiments upside-down. Leaving your ketchup bottle upside-down will help ensure that the ketchup flows down to the lid by the time you need to use it, no tapping required and no specific bottleneck type necessary. It'll also prevent you from squirting out that nasty "ketchup water" — because all of the ketchup will be near the lid, you'll avoid putting ketchup-adjacent water on your food. Try tapping the neck of your ketchup bottle to release as much ketchup as possible, but if your bottle is shaped differently, know that there are still ways to get your ketchup out without smacking the bottle repeatedly.