Hoda Kotb’s juice hack turned out to be a total lemon.
Hoda attempted to squeeze the moment and dazzle Jenna Bush Hager on TODAY on May 16 with a hack she saw on TikTok in which you use a wooden skewer to puncture a lemon and drain the juice without getting all the seeds in it.
Instead, it all ended in hysterical laughter when it failed miserably.
She started out confident and excited.
“I’m going to show you a trick,” she told Jenna. “Sorry, I’m obsessed. You know how you’re always trying to get lemon juice out, and you’re grinding it out, and the seeds?”
She then produced the type of skewer used for kebabs on the grill.
“Take it and put it in the navel,” she said about one of the ends of the lemon. “Isn’t that what it is?”
The seedless lemon juice would soon be flowing into the cup in front of her — she was sure of it.
“I’m going to pull it out,” she said about the skewer. “OK, now watch me work.”
Hoda seemed to be getting a little trickle going until the lemon collapsed into a mushy mess.
“Oh wait, hold on, that one ripped,” she said. “I’m going to do it again. Just wait a second. Wait, wait. That one just had thin skin. Hold on.”
One botched lemon was not going to deter her.
She grabbed another one.
“I want you to see how much is coming out,” she said. “Give me some room here. Look at the cup.”
A single drop barely squeezed out. The lemon would be drained by Memorial Day at this rate.
Jenna could no longer contain herself.
“This is the worst hack I have ever seen,” she said.
Hoda started cracking up as she staunchly defended her trick.
“It really works!” she said. “I did it at home three times! It works, I’m telling you.”
It looked like it might have ended there.
“There’s no more lemons. We’ve used all the lemons,” she said. “We’re going to get back to it because it’s important.”
“It’s so important,” Jenna joked.
The TODAY crew made sure the laughs wouldn’t stop by producing more lemons.
Jenna then demonstrated the “hack” that mankind has been using since first discovering lemons.
“Look at this,” she said. “Just squeeze it like a normal person. We don’t need a hack for everything.”
Hoda was still ready to die on Lemon Hill.
“This hack is amazing!” she said.
“Who thought that squeezing lemons was an issue?” Jenna responded.
Hoda then tried her best to care about the news that actors Justin Long and Kate Bosworth reportedly got married in a secret wedding, but her mind was in only one place.
She picked up the skewer and another lemon.
“We’ll take time at the end of the show to do this,” Jenna said.
“No, it has to happen now,” Hoda said.
The two then used their dueling methods. Jenna cut the lemon in half “like a normal person” and squeezed the juice into a cup.
As Hoda nearly doubled over with laughter, she went for the hat trick with her third lemon.
Once again, it was like rainfall in the Mojave Desert.
“You did that hack with three lemons and look at this carnage!” Jenna said at the pile of lemon carcasses in front of Hoda.
“Oh my God, my stomach,” Hoda said while catching her breath. “You know what this reminds me of? Every day you’ve got to have one laugh where you’re almost going to pee your pants.”
Jenna held up her cup next to Hoda’s to demonstrate how much more juice she got out of the lemons. Hoda quickly reminded her the point of the hack in the first place.
“Why don’t you get a strainer so you can get the seeds out,” she joked about Jenna’s cup.
Hoda was like a baseball player: Going 0-for-3 was not going to stop her from swinging for the fences in her fourth at-bat.
“Last one, last one,” she said while picking up a fourth lemon. “Dang it, it’s not working!”
Even though life gave her lemons and she made an exceedingly small amount of lemonade, the laughs made it all worth it.
“I feel so good right now,” Hoda said.
She then warned that she has another hack she wanted to show Jenna, but that’s for another time. The lemons may have to be replenished first.
For the record, the hack does work, as demonstrated in a viral TikTok, but it requires very ripe lemons.
The real hack by Hoda may have been how to produce instant laughter.
“I feel so good right now,” Hoda said. “I forgot those kind of laughs.”
This content was originally published here.
