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.
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.
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.
Sticking a fork in sushi feels illegal.
Only in Japan. It’s punishable by death.
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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
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
I use them for pretty much everything because they’re marginally quicker to clean thoroughly than a fork
3rd reason: because it’s fun.
Plus it’s fun.
Once you learn to eat rice with chopsticks you become unstoppable.
*for sticky rice (other rice is impractical)
Idk man I can eat fried rice pretty well with chopsticks.
One grain at a time
Because they are easier to handwash
But i don’t wash anything in a restaurant :(
Not markedly easier though
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.
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.
Joke’s on you I look like even more of an amateur when I use chopsticks
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.
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.
