Honestly for a lot of foods they’re really not a bad choice. They’re excellent for eating flavored chips when you dont want powder on your fingers, also grabbing things from jars
Teaching my Cheetos loving children how to use chopsticks has saved all my gaming controllers.
Chop sticks and Cheetos are a classic combo!
I use them for eating popcorn
But then you can’t shovel handfuls of popcorn in your mouth where a quarter misses your mouth and is found in the couch cushions 2 days later.
found in the couch cushions 2 days later.
Just saving some for later.
Gotta feed the roach homies
Aren’t those the people who come over and empty your ashtrays when they’re out of weed?
They are the best choice for salads. Eating salads with a fork sucks
I’ve gotta find someone with a 3D printer locally who can make me those fingy chopsticks for cheetos. I’m tired of cleaning my keyboard everytime I wanna snacc.
Please do not eat food served via a 3d printed tool/plate/bowl/cup. A number of the materials that are used for 3d printing are toxic (cross contamination is likely even if the material has been changed), and the plastic can contain small abrasion which are impossible to sanitize.
and the plastic can contain small abrasion which are impossible to sanitize
This is a big reason why I don’t like plastic dishware, cups, etc even when they are made with food-safe materials.
the plastic can contain small abrasion which are impossible to sanitize
That’s putting it mildly - every 3D print has tons of small crevices and imperfections even just from the layer lines alone, it’s just completely impossible to keep a 3D print clean between repeated food contact. Unless it’s sealed with resin or similar, but that’s also not easy to get right.
Check your public library, nowadays many often have a couple for the public to use
When I was in Toronto, yeppers. Alas I’m on an island out in the middle of nowhere. I’m gonna have to find a 3D print shop or make a friend lol
Alas I’m on an island out in the middle of nowhere.
It’s nice to hear from you again, and to be reminded of your living situation somewhere near Trailer Park Boys and Man in a Motel
my god grabbing things from jars how has that never occurred to me
I find it just fun to eat with them. In the end, it doesn’t matter as much how you are delivering food to your feeding hole.
Some fun chopstick facts: most chopsticks in the world (including China) are made in Georgia (the US state, not the country) because of the ready availability of cheap pine. One of the major reasons pine is so prevalent in Georgia (and in the US South in general) is slavery: cotton plantations in the pre-artificial fertilizer era tended to exhaust the soil after a few years, leaving pine trees as the only profitable crop that can be grown on much of the land.
Cotton is a destructive demanding crop. The post industrial era cotton farming has left swaths of land poisoned with arsenic and all sorts of nasties (chicken concentration camps are bad for arsenic too.)
(chicken concentration camps are bad for arsenic too.)
This is caused by roxarsone in chicken feed. I think they stopped using it several years ago, but I’d expect that this has caused lasting damage in some places.
Most of the chopsticks I’ve seen have been hardwood, plastic or metal … I guess there’s more disposable ones by quantity in the world because most people don’t have or carry their own?
Anywhere you have trees there are chopsticks. The only time I use them is when I don’t have silverware in the wilds, either the wilds of the woods or the wilds of the endless wastelands of the automobile lands. Break off a couple twigs.
Who else goes through spoons quicker than any other utensils? In my household
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- Big spoons
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- Little spoons
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- Chop sticks
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- Knives
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- Forks
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- Butter knives
Long spoon. I love long spoon.
I can hear this image
That spoon in too big.
I bought a few sundae spoons at a thrift store on a lark and holy crap are they useful!
We call them Korean fighting spoons. Since it’s for reaching side dishes and sauces before others at the table
Found the backpacker.
Little spoons go first for me,. But yes, spoons are the ultimate utensil
Spork enters the chat.
Splayd
Get outta here Popeyes. Your tines are too short to grab the meat, and your ends are too pointy to gather the last 5%. I’d end up full of styrofoam, pawing at a bone like a kitten if I used you. My fingers and teeth work 100x better than you.
Even if I’m backpacking and I need to save weight, I’d rather have a cat-dog version of spoon and fork.
I keep sporks in my car so if i’m starving after a shopping trip I can break into some grub.
Little spoons - by a large margin
Forks
Big spoons
Kitchen knives
Butter knives
/I don’t use chopsticks
I have a lot of condiments to scoop
i use what’s most convenient to grab… for instance i use a spoon, or even a fork, for making a pb&j far more often than a knife. there’s a better chance of those being out on the drying rack than a knife. if that means i’m eating ice cream with a fork, i’m eating ice cream with a fork - as long as it’s frozen enough.
Whatever falls into the sarlacc pit that is my garbage disposal goes first
Depends on what I made that week. If it’s a soup or stew, spoons are the first to go.
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I live in Hawaiʻi. We use chopsticks all the time. Itʻs just… what you do.
Whenever we get takeout and they give us forks instead of chopsticks, my wife and I refer to it as “getting haloeʻd” (for those who donʻt know, “haole” is a Hawaiian term for foreigner that tends be used exclusively for Caucasian people). Thereʻs a general assumption that most whites donʻt know how to use chopsticks. Related, I was once at a Japanese funeral, eating poke and sashimi with chopsticks, and this sweet lady comes up to me and says “you use those so well!” It felt like the white-person version of “youʻre so well-spoken!”
I feel insulted when I go for pho and get offered a fork.
I stopped for dinner once at a Chinese restaurant in Mississippi run by people actually from China. I (white guy) used chopsticks and our server just stared at me wide-eyed for most of the meal. She said I was the first white person she had ever seen using them, and she’d been working there for years. That is Mississippi for you.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d learned to use them eating at Japanese restaurants.
Yes, but
I’m passable with chopsticks, but I can’t think of any situation where I’d prefer them over other utensils.
Almost any pasta. Roasted or boiled veggies. Cheezits or similar, keeps the dust off. Pierogies, most snall dumplings really.
I like them better for ramen, but a fork does about as well.
Chopsticks are the best utensils for eating chips(crisps in England). I love eating chips but i also love being on my computer. Why get chipdust everywhere when you can be clean?
I use it them when I douse cheetos with valentina. Two of the most finger stainingest foods known at this point in history.
It’s like ambrosia for those of us awaiting cardiac release.
Your crisps have dust? How old are they?
I don’t because i use chopsticks
Sticking a fork in sushi feels illegal.
Only in Japan. It’s punishable by death.
OMG that took me WAY longer than it should to realize it was a joke. All the way up to the soy sauce I thought it was just stuffy and serious.
In Japan you eat sushi with your hands
I use it like a spatula :)
i don’t mind
There are foods that just don’t hit the same if you don’t eat them with chopsticks.
Ever tried to eat sushi with a fork? It just feels wrong.
But if it’s a rice bowl, screw the chopsticks. Gimme a spoon.
I firmly believe sushi should be eaten with hands.
Japanese sushi chefs agree. Sushi is a finger food.
Makes sense. A chef’s hands touched 80% of that piece of Nigiri while making it
Can’t use chopsticks, eh?
It’s how it’s eaten. Usually.
I highly suggest cooking and eating eggs with them!
The thing people forget is that the bowl is part of the cutlery.
It’s why the bowl is so small. You pick it up!
Shovel that rice into your mouth like a pro chopstick user my friend. Stupid western table manners be damned!
(I’m from a western country, I also dislike the silly rule that you can’t bring your face down to your plate/bowl if you’re eating something hard to pick up)
Depends on the rice, sticky rice is really easy to eat with chop sticks, you can just generally grab anything and get a chunk. Medium sticky you can scoop up but non sticky/liquid sauce is a non-starter.
I eat sushi with a fork at least once a week
Spaghetti with a fork fesls wrong
Yeah it is much better when you suck them in one by one through a drinking straw
Spaghetti with everything feels wrong. The form factor is simply bad. It’s not like a garden hose, where you need it to be that long.
It’s not my least favorite, but it’s a bit down the list. Penne is probably the best general purpose shape, at least according to these guys: https://www.realsimple.com/we-asked-chefs-which-pasta-shape-works-best-in-any-dish-11849324
I’m a fan of rotelle and fiori as well.
I prefer Vesuvio and Cavatappi
Both fine choices, they are on the upper end of the scale for me as well.
Just break it up before you cook it.
I do, when I cook it :) still prefer more complicated geometry
Nah it’s noodles, chopsticks just feel right with it.
I used to eat sushi with a fork and it is possible. But that’s really about the only food that’s easier to eat with chopsticks than fork and knife.
3rd reason: because it’s fun.
I avoid the chopstick places because I could never master them and I was tired of feeling like an ignorant buffoon. The surprise was, after more than 5 years of avoiding the chopstick places, I still felt like an ignorant buffoon.
Soup - drink from bowl and use chopsticks if it has bits
Big soupy thing (ramen, pho, that sort) - spoon and chopsticks
Rice with grains that don’t stick together much - spoon
Things like ice cream (dish), applesauce, that sort of consistency: spoon
Food from countries/places that don’t cut things down to bite size: knife + fork (sometimes replaced by chopsticks when cutting is done)
Most other non-liquids: chopsticks or no utensil depending upon the case.
~ Person in Japan for over a decade
I don’t understand chinese restaurants that will cut broccoli and the like into unmanageable pieces, too big for a bite. Idk if it’s cultural or a scheme of the all you can eat buffets to lessen the ability to shovel food into your mouth so quickly. Didn’t work on me, all you can eat buffets are a mission for me to make them lose money.
I can’t speak to Chinese Chinese, but a lot of east Asia cuts things into pieces one can pick up with chopsticks and eat in one bite. I haven’t been to a US Chinese buffet in years, but I don’t recall overly-large pieces the last time I went. Where I grew up (rural Ohio) not many people used chopsticks I til fairly recently, so maybe I’m forgetting my younger days or perhaps something else is going on.
Because they are fun and feel appropriate when they are used?
For me, the green part is: Because I used them while cooking and don’t want to get anything else dirty.
I’m still adjusting to them for eating (should probably cut/choose my veggies, noodles etc. to rather be long+thin). But for cooking, I do find them quite good.
I can use wooden chopsticks in my non-stick pan. And they’re really useful for stirring food, as you can just hold them close together (or use a single stick), when the food is prone to spilling.
I don’t yet have the dexterity to always successfully flip foods in my frying pan with chopsticks, but it’s not like I have that with other utensils. Whether chopsticks, spatula or fork, it’s always a fiddly bugger.
I don’t yet have the dexterity to always successfully flip foods in my frying pan with chopsticks
I’ve had the most success using tongs with flat ends. Dexterity aside, the small grip surface of a chopstick could damage the item being flipped.
