Jan 03, 2017

Why are you still using Silverware when you could be using Chopsticks

I’ve been annoyed with silverware for as long as I’ve owned my own sets of it. I’ve had the misfortune of having hand-me-down things that I don’t necessarily need dumped on me, tons of silverware being one of them. Having too little of anything is supposedly poor form. Having too much not only takes up space, but also enables me to put off cleaning them for a bit longer. It’s clutter as far as I’m concerned.

As such, I’m officially making the move to chopsticks as my primary utensil. It’s not just because it deepens my Japanese immersion environment. It’s for totally practical reasons. I promise.

To be clear, I don’t mean the disposable kind you’ll find in most restaurants. I mean the kind that are of reasonable quality and totally reusable.

You don’t look convinced. You’re probably thinking “chopsticks aren’t good for everything” and “chopsticks are harder to use” and “forks and spoons make more sense” and “you’re obviously some degenerate weeb who’s just doing this because you have a sick obsession with Japan”. Nuh-uh, I’m being totally serious and pragmatic here. Allow me to explain by debunking these chopstick-related criticisms in a glorious streak of strawman arguments!

Chopsticks aren’t good for everything

Perhaps, but spoons and forks aren’t exactly that great either. That’s also a somewhat arrogant/ignorant criticism to make. Much of Eastern Asia has quite literally used chopsticks for centuries (feel free to fact-check me on this) and they appear to be doing just fine. Not only that, but Asian cuisines are relatively diverse to boot. This criticism implies that chopsticks are only good for certain foods and that’s just plain wrong. Chopsticks are great for most foods if you think about it. A good pair of chopsticks should allow one to pick up things as small as a grain of rice with relative ease.

Chopsticks are harder to use

No they’re not, they’re just different. I very much doubt anyone was a pro at using a fork/knife in a concerted effort to cut something efficiently right off the bat. It simply takes some getting used to. Nothing revolutionary here.

Forks and spoons make more sense

Oh really? You’re not just saying that because that’s what you’ve used all your life? If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Chopsticks are on the reverse side of that, except that chopsticks have some objective benefits that are a direct result of their simplicity. Case in point, no one seems to agree on how to eat spaghetti. Go on, ask around. I dare you. Second case in point, I had a Chinese professor who claims to have eaten spaghetti with one chopstick. Yeah. Eat that.

Don’t laugh (or do, I guess I don’t care), but it wasn’t even a question for me as soon as a friend of mine astutely pointed out that chopsticks are easier to clean and not that much harder to use. Let’s pretend for a minute that he’s not a person who has similarly been learning Japanese (quite successfully) through the craft of a self-imposed immersion environment as I am. Let’s focus on what’s important and not-in-any-way-biased: Chopsticks are simpler in almost every way and not as hard to use as you think.

Let’s try putting chopsticks to the logical test with more things I’ve heard people say.

You can’t eat soup with chopsticks

You totally can. In fact, it doesn’t make sense to use a spoon in most cases. The bowl is a giant spoon already, and anything that can be grabbed/lifted out is a strong candidate for chopsticks. A fork can’t reliably do that for soup.

You can’t eat a steak with chopsticks

Again, wrong. You may need a knife, but you don’t need a fork anymore than you do chopsticks. It may require the chopsticks to be of the more pointy variety, but that’s not a difficult quality to satisfy. Wait. No. You don’t even need a knife. Frankly, the only time you have any business using a fork and knife is when you’re trying to impress some (potentially imaginary) third party with how supposedly distinguished you are as an eater. Any other time, you can use your hands if you want, and even use your teeth as a knife. We evolved to facilitate that, right? Now that I think of it, maybe chopsticks would be marginally more difficult in this case, but again, who are we trying to impress? Furthermore, have you ever noticed that many dishes have the meat conveniently cut up already? Yeah. It’s not a bad idea. Your call, I guess.

What about peas? Peas are slippery and round and would definitely be too hard for chopsticks.

This criticism has not considered that peas on their own are an obnoxious food choice to begin with, and are just as difficult with a fork or spoon. In fact, if chopsticks are capable of picking up a single grain of rice (not just the sticky kind) then they can easily handle peas. But frankly, why are you eating a food with such obtuse transportation requirements for getting it into your mouth? Mix those peas in with something that’s simpler to get a handle on, like soup, or a casserole. Anything, really.

Alright, the strawman has retired for the day. He almost had me with steak but I sure showed him! I think it also goes without saying that some of these are pretty contrived examples. What I’m trying to illustrate is that chopsticks are a suitable replacement for standard silverware in more cases than you might imagine.

Not too surprisingly, there are a few things that can’t be eaten with them as easily.

What about pudding? What about ice cream and jello?

A co-worker pointed this out to me. Well shoot. He got me there. I imagine pudding would be rather difficult. I think I could manage jello, maybe even ice-cream, but it’s a stretch and I can’t say I’ve ever tried. Though much of the time, chopsticks are used like a fork for many things, but it does take a little more balance. Again, it’s just practice. On the other hand, I’ve seen many examples of spoons being used for deserts in Japan. I’ll get to these minor exceptions in a minute. Apparently Thailand uses a fork-like-thing instead of chopsticks, or so I’ve heard. Again, this diversity arises from necessity, not superiority.

Fun fact: Chopsticks are also great for cooking! They have a special variant that’s much longer than normal ones for hotpot and the like. I’ve never had success with a fork in that scenario. The closest we have is tongs, which are like baby’s first chopsticks if you think about it. With soups it’s nice to have a spoon to taste with. Some Asian cuisine has its own version of the western spoon for that exact purpose.

To summarize, the best things about chopsticks are

• Simple/Low-profile
• Easy to clean
• Replace both spoons and forks in most cases

It’s not that chopsticks are in every way superior. They just have a few things that are totally better and those few things happen to be things I value.

I will assert, however, that anything else can be solved with a spork, which is why I own a titanium spork. Easier to clean than a fork, but more robust than both a spoon and fork, which conveniently covers anything that chopsticks are less-than-optimal for, which admittedly is very few things. There you go. Chopsticks + Spork = Win (for me). Try it sometime.