Replacing forks and chopsticks with pincers | Hacker News Reader

Replacing forks and chopsticks with pincers

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These are basically training chopsticks. If you find yourself using them a lot, you'll find it easier and more satisfying to use actual chopsticks. Chopsticks are cheap, easy to clean, versatile, able to be made from materials like bamboo, and more elegant than pincers. You can't make rudimentary scissors out of pincers, and those points look too narrow to hold anything heavy. The only problem with chopsticks is that they're harder to use, but if you use them regularly you'll be able to pick up heavy items using polished metal chopsticks in no time.

https://marcosticks.org/best-learning-chopsticks/

> The only problem with chopsticks is that they're harder to use

I'd almost say that's debatable.

My wife had eaten almost exclusively with chopsticks when we got together, and myself almost exclusively with a fork. At this point I'm much more competent with chopsticks than she is with a fork.

I've watched our infant daughter learn how to use a fork.

It's all made it pretty clear that using a fork does require skill, technique, and fine motor skills if you expect to use it as much more than a shovel. Even as a shovel, trying to get the food _on_ to the fork without pushing it over the edge of the plate requires some finesse. Even just trying to stab food, many foods require different techniques to not have them roll away, break apart when stabbed, etc.

I pretty firmly believe that treating a fork as intuitive mostly just comes from everyone here being familiar with it.

> My wife had eaten almost exclusively with chopsticks when we got together, and myself almost exclusively with a fork. At this point I'm much more competent with chopsticks than she is with a fork.

I can attest to this. Sometimes my wife struggles to get food out of the hot pot so I get it out using chop sticks for her.

Years ago, I learned to hold chopsticks correctly the hard way: by looking at instructions (found on a packet of disposable chopsticks) and holding them as instructed to pick up food while eating.

It was awkward, and my hand ached for a week or so before I adjusted. Now, I can even pick up peanuts and grains of rice with chopsticks without thinking about it.

I'm left-handed, and now I'm training my right hand to hold chopsticks too. :-)

> These are basically training chopsticks. If you find yourself using them a lot, you'll find it easier and more satisfying to use actual chopsticks. Chopsticks are cheap, easy to clean, versatile, able to be made from materials like bamboo, and more elegant than pincers.

Using chopsticks is also good exercise for your fingers. I suspect that's the main reason why they're so satisfying to use.

I suspect a lot of the satisfaction for western users is they only use them when they eat sushi. Which of course is simply delicious.

I've used chopsticks on a variety of stuff. I guess the answer to that question depends on whether you own your own pair of chopsticks or if you just get them as part of your meal.

isn't sushi intended to be eaten by hand?

I believe that conventionally nigiri and hand rolls are meant to be eaten by hand, and (cut) maki rolls with chopsticks.

I mean back in the day maybe yes, but nowadays even in Japan no-one eats sushi by hand.

"No one" is a bit hyperbolic. It's not super common, but some people do. I think the most common place where it happens is high-end sushi restaurants.

Yeah it’s a hyperbole for sure. But on a general day-to-day life you just don’t see it.

Yeah, chopsticks are like using your fingers without getting them dirty. I've started using surplus takeout chopsticks for cooking. (I have nice chopsticks, but they give me them anyway). I have a jar of chopsticks[] on the counter and wash / reuse. They whisk eggs, pick up bacon, stir pasta, snag a bit of shell from the egg you just cracked into the pan, etc.

[]: chopsticks, fish turner, measuring spoons

Using chopsticks to pick up finger food that's a little greasy, like potato chips, while keeping your hands clean for typing feels great.

I had a roommate that found it hilarious when I did so but I swore by it and still do.

There are special "cooking" chopsticks you can buy that are thicker and longer than normal chopsticks which helps keep your hands away from the heat. Great for flipping things while deep frying in hot oil and more.

I’ve worked with a number of colleagues who did this. I bought them all these chopsticks I found on AliExpress that we’ve since dubbed ChipSticks. They’re pretty similar to training chopsticks, except they slide over the top of your fingers. The result is chopsticks that are almost like extensions of your fingers rather than something you hold.

I love using chopsticks to eat chips and other snacks. Keeps my fingers clean & easier to pace myself!

Indeed, the only way to eat cheese puffs is with chopsticks.

You can buy slightly longer and bigger chopsticks specifically made for cooking. They are a joy. They can do everything you would use tongs for but are easier to use.

That’s what I thought reading the article but to be fair with the author it took me months to become really good with chopsticks while I was eating all my meals using them living in Singapore. Most people will only use chopsticks while eating out so they frankly suck at it. I get why tweezers would be appealing to them.

There's a big difference between these and training chopsticks, which is that training chopsticks have an undeserved childish association with them. No need to try to add that association to this entirely different utensil.

> If you find yourself using them a lot, you'll find it easier and more satisfying to use actual chopsticks

Personally, I can use chopsticks just fine, but there's no way it's "easier" to use chopsticks than pincers. It might be more satisfying to master chopsticks, but I don't think most people are interested in mastering their salad fork and feeling satisfaction, we hopefully make decisions based on effectiveness. The author was saying, "hey, let's drop the historical baggage and just use the more effective tool when we see it."

> no way it's "easier" to use chopsticks than pincers

Once you are practiced, yes it is easier. Chopsticks are a more effective and more versatile tool, assuming you can use them fluently.

But you are right that it takes significant practice to achieve fluency. Similar to riding a bike, hand writing, knitting, swimming, playing a musical instrument, controlling a puppet, or any other complex new physical skill.

> don't think most people are interested in mastering their salad fork and feeling satisfaction

A salad fork is an effective but low-skill tool which does not require much practice. An adult can “master” the salad fork in a matter of minutes.

>> Once you are practiced, yes it is easier. Chopsticks are a more effective and more versatile tool, assuming you can use them fluently.

“Versatile” =/= “easier”.

My mother-in-law with arthritis and no familiarity with chopsticks would disagree with you that it’s easier for her, today, to pick up a sweet pea with chopsticks vs those pincers.

I would assume that if you presented people unfamiliar with eating using both implements a meal, the pincers would be selected more often. That’s what most people mean by “easy”- simpler and more intuitive.

What is easier? 100km on foot or 100km on a bicycle? Almost all people already know how to walk and run, it's simpler and more intuitive. But I bet if you know how to ride a bike, you'll pick the bike.

> My mother-in-law with arthritis and no familiarity with chopsticks ...

Can you see how this does not disagree with “assuming you can use them fluently”?

Anything you can already easily do is easy. You are correct.

It’s a pointless statement, which is my point, but it is correct.

For someone who is fluent, an “easier” learner’s tool is often more cumbersome and less pleasant to use than the original tool.

For example, instead of learning to use general-purpose kitchen knives you could buy a bunch of specialized kitchen gadgets: scallion-cutting scissors, a garlic peeler, a garlic dicer, an asparagus peeler, a strawberry stem remover, a bell pepper seed remover, a tomato slicer, a bread guillotine, an egg slicer, a banana slicer, etc. (these are real devices, not jokes).

For a total novice or someone with a severe disability, these might be “easier” than just using a knife or two for the same job. But for someone who is fluent with 2–3 basic knives, these jobs are all faster, easier, and more effective to do with a knife than with the purpose-built tool; each gadget also has very limited utility and wastes space when not in use.

Can you see how the unqualified statement “a banana slicer is easier to use than a chef’s knife” could also be considered misleading?

Not to give the fork too much credit, but a lot of people don't even hold them correctly. I've watched peoples food dance across plates because of this. Also +1 to the other folks mentioning people with disabilities/arthritis. My dad was in a rehab home for a bit and there were a lot of people who had to have their food served precut.

Forks are not that easy to use actually. It’s probably fine with salads which is a fairly large and easy to stick piece of food but if you have ever seen someone with tremors try to use one it quickly gets obvious that forks require a lot of fine motor skills to be used properly.

I believe the comparison was relative to the scale of eating utensils; forks being far lower on the skill curve relative to chop sticks .

If you have tremors, a fork will be easier than chop sticks for instance. A spoon perhaps easier still.

But they are metal, making them easier to clean, and connected, meaning one part of the two can't get lost.

From a functional perspective that may be a meaningful improvement; if you are running a restaurant with a focus on costs & cleanliness, this sounds better.

despite Chinese-American fast food restaurants typically using cheap disposable bamboo chopsticks, metal chopsticks also exist and are used in many restaurants. higher-end restaurants typically use high-quality (heavy) polymer or coated wooden chopsticks which can be thoroughly cleaned in regular dishwashers.

edit to add: I enjoy Chinese-American fast food, but like all fast food, it is designed to be cheap, not luxury. it would be like going to an American-style fast food restaurant and complaining that all American food is bad because it gets your hands dirty when eating, or complaining that the cheap disposable plastic utensils are hard to clean (which gets to another point that disposable wooden chopsticks are probably much better for the environment than disposable plastic forks/knives, but that's a digression from a digression)

Chopsticks are regularly made out of metal. Wood is a design choice, not a necessity.

And most disposable are made from bamboo which is substainable.

In Japan chopsticks are not made of metal. They are in Korea, though (AIUI).

The metal chopsticks that I've tried are too slippery. Wood (even smooth wood) has just a bit more grip.

Honestly once I got used to using chopsticks, Asian food somehow just tasted better.

Same with Indian food and using your hands. It just somehow tastes better.

I’ve been living in Asia for 11 years now. I think. Not quite sure.

There’s something about picking up food with chop sticks and not crushing or mixing food together like with a fork, and being able to dip it or turn it. It makes eating food here more enjoyable to the point that I agree.

Somehow it just makes food taste better.

Now that you mention it, yes, pincers do remind me of training chopsticks:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%EB%BD%80%EB%A1%9C%EB%A1%9C+...

... though I guess a restaurant owner might be hesitant to put these on a table :P

Disposable utensils is very 20th Century.

I know there are multiple use chopsticks but I’ve yet to run across such in a bar or other informal cuisine setting.

Disposable chopsticks are a bit of soft wood or bamboo. Your processed and bleached napkin probably has a higher environmental impact. Compare that to a plastic fork, or even a metal fork that accidentally ends up in the trash.

That said, most people have re-usable ones at home. Metal ones can be tricky, but easily last a decade or more. Bamboo ones are also common. Both are dishwasher safe.

> That said, most people have re-usable ones at home.

Source?

I mean, I’ll believe that you have them.

Anyway, the thread was about restaurants, I believe.

Lol, show me your source on how many households have re-usable forks

That's an interesting question and I couldn't find a direct answer. Let's use a good old Fermi estimate instead.

This report [1] tells us that the "global disposable cutlery market was valued at $10.1 billion in 2021."

I checked the Walmart website and they sell various disposable cutlery packs at about $0.04 -$0.08 per single unit. I know it's not an accurate representation of global prices, but it's a good start. I'm going to use $0.05 per unit in my estimates.

A market size of $10.1 billion divided by $0.05 gives us 202 billion units of disposable cutlery used per year.

The report I linked above mentioned that disposable eating utensils "are generally used once and then discarded".

Let's assume that a person uses two disposable utensils per day. That's 700 utensils per year.

202 billion divided by 700 gives us little less than 290 million people using disposable utensils.

Let's also assume that those 290 million people use exclusively disposable utensils. It's likely not true - say, some people might use disposables eating out but reusables at home. It lowers the average yearly usage of disposable utensils down from 700. This would increase the number of people who use disposable utensils. At the same time, it would also increase the number of people using reusable utensils.

How many people use forks and spoons and knives (of any kind)? I've seen anything between 1-2 billion. Seems plausible.

1.5 billion (total utensils users) - 290 million (disposable only users) is 1.21 billion people using reusable utensils. About 400 million households, at 3 people per household.

A crude estimate, but feels in the right order of magnitude.

1 - https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/disposable-cutlery-mark...

Globally? Vs chopsticks?

Any household who's had a picnic or party, I'd guess. Leftover disposable cutlery is unavoidable.

I suspect that you did not read that carefully.

I expect they mean that people who frequently use chopsticks at home are likely to have reusable ones.

Utensils in general are 19th century. Back in the day people just carried a sharp knife with them to stab their food. Spoons didn't exist in Europe until mid-17th century. Forks came into fashion in the 18th century in Europe, only reaching America by the 19th century. The main purpose was for scooping food off a plate, and steadying food for cutting.

Any non-crappy japanese, chinese, korean, etc restaurant will give you reusable chopsticks. Korean stuff is all metal so it's easy to clean. Some people are weird and bring their own portable chopsticks (they screw together and have a pouch).

All accurate, though we might qualify that by 'spoons' we mean personal spoons for eating from a personal bowl, it would be shocking if medieval Europeans didn't use stirring spoons while cooking, or ladles for serving, for example. Just that if you shovel the stew out of the bowl with a piece of bread, you don't need a spoon also.

https://www.tofugu.com/japan/chopsticks-in-japan

> In 1878, Japan produced the world's first disposable chopsticks, and today China and Japan use the majority of them. China is responsible for using 45 billion disposable chopsticks a year. Japan is about half of that at 24 billion.

I've used plastic, lacquered wood, and stainless steel multi-use chopsticks. Each of them has problems. At home I use titanium chopsticks and they are phenomenal, but bamboo are just as good if not better.

...which accidentally gives us the information in question. With 1.4 billion people using chopsticks on average twice a day, that'd mean 511 billion instances of chop-stick usage per year.

So the Chinese use disposable chopsticks about 8% of the time, thus debunking the grandparent's claim that they're primarily disposable.

So you figured I was talking about the large number of bars and restaurants I visit in China?

:-D

Sadly I’ve never had an occasion to travel there, and so my assumptions and observations about utensil usage are valid for parts of Western Europe, Africa and South East Asia.

I figured since the thread was about Estonia, it would be safe to assume we were not discussing how the Chinese might benefit from switching away from chopsticks to large pincers.

You didn't qualify your statement with a location (and I have no idea who you are; there are obviously readers here from all over the world), and it seems weird to retroactively assume that we all understood your general statement about chopstick usage to only apply to the regions where they're only used as a novelty, but not to, you know, the region of the world which (a) actually uses chopsticks and (b) contains most of the world's population.

I'm sorry, I will be sure to post be more specific when I post in the future.

That way you won't need to tell me I'm wrong. I can tell you don't enjoy that.

That may be an America thing. In Asia, you'll almost always get reusable chopsticks at a restaurant.

Disposable chopsticks are both ridiculously cheap and not much worse than reusable ones (compared to how bad plastic forks are). So the crossover where we switch from disposable to reusable as a bar/restaurant gets nicer is in a different place with chopsticks vs forks.

Metal chopsticks are pretty common in Korea.

even cheap hole in a wall restaurants in China use reusable chopsticks from hard wood/plastic, they have even special cleaning machine where you just throw them in top and when cleaned they stick from side

metal chopsticks are pretty much standard in Korea (personally not a fan, prefer hard wood or good quality plastic, metal feels cold and clinks on teeth)

This reads like a Jr engineer's argument on why some text editor is better than vim after only learning a couple vim commands. Pincers have a lower learning curve but chopsticks are so much more versatile if you're skilled with it.

Here's when chopsticks are more useful than pincers. * Grabbing something wide like a large meatball. * Slicing soft food like tofu. * Separating bones in a chicken wing. * Eating noodles (you have to go in wide, close, keep parallel)

after reading a reddit thread a few months ago about why forks are better than chopsticks, I realized that food and the utensils used to eat it are actually highly culturally intertwined.

for example, a key argument in favor of forks was that fork and knife is vastly superior to chopstick and knife when eating steak. Asian cultures simply don't have this issue, because they don't eat steak, because they don't (historically) have huge pastures for free cattle grazing. in Asian cuisine, meat is served pre-cut, not in large chunks for the diner to cut themselves. therefore, Asians don't have the problem of cutting steak at the table.

similarly, Americans rarely eat soft tofu; although tofu is gaining popularity in the US, mainstream grocery stores and restaurants selling tofu tend to sell firm tofu, probably mainly because it's closer to meat in texture. firm tofu is usually served pre-cut, for various reasons including that firm tofu is usually served with stronger and more uniform flavoring. therefore, Americans don't need to cut their soft tofu at the table.

chopsticks are also useful for taking individual bites out of a shared plate without disturbing the remaining contents. consider taking one bite of a shared salad using a fork: it's impossible to do so without either slightly crushing the remainder of the salad, which is impolite, or using the fork as a spoon, which is highly inefficient (salad falls off easily). Americans don't have this problem because they generally take a large portion of salad using a spoon or tongs, then use the fork to take bites from their own plate where it's acceptable to slightly crush the salad.

Re steak: They don’t have that issue because the way their food is cut is by the chef to appropriate portions.

> Chicken wings with chopsticks

Excuse me but what

I do it for when I don't want to get my hands dirty

How do I quit chopsticks?

(sorry it had to be made)

Chopsticks are non-modal. Like emacs.

> They make it so much easier to eat anything from sushi to chicken wings

I don't see how one would pick up a sushi roll with the pictured pincers. It looks like their default opening is not large enough.

Also, with sufficient experience, you can actually eat chicken wings, and many other foods with chopsticks.

The only case in which chopsticks don’t work so well is where food is slippery.

Chicken wings are much easier to easy with chopsticks then with Western cutlery and avoid the awful sticky fingers issue entirely.

Even more so for pig trotters and chicken feet which otherwise make your hands aggressively sticky due to the collagen.

Chopsticks are also the best for eating flaming hot Cheetos. Avoids the red-finger syndrome, and the feeling that “I should eat some more, now that my fingers are already dirty”.

I have such a reputation among my friends for liking flaming hot cheetos and eating them with chopsticks. I also like the Metal Gear Solid video game franchise, so a friend of mine made me this drawing:

https://i.imgur.com/SLaMl2h.png

Wow, based on the date on the drawing, you've been chowing flaming hots with chopsticks for a decade. Do you have any lining left in your esophagus? I can only eat them in moderation (and can no longer eat the extra flaming hots at all — they give me a 'sore throat' feeling a couple hours later).

Yeah I've had to slow down on them, my stomach is less agreeable to them than before.

But back when I first started eating them, I was once able to finish an entire bag in one sitting. Not my proudest accomplishment, but it's amazing what a young stomach can handle.

Nowadays I don't live in a country which has them readily available so I only have them from time to time when I visit the states.

Or liquid.

You just need hollow chopsticks

This is why in Korean cuisine the default dining set is spoon+chopsticks.

I'm just simple boy from the Midwest who learned to eat his steak and potatoes with a fork and knife, as $DEITY intended, and even I learned to use chopsticks well enough that I don't see what the pictured tool buys me. I understand that some have hand mobility issues, but the pictured solution reminds me of the chopsticks with a rubber band that my Asian immigrant neighbors used for their kids.

Take my titanium chopsticks from my cold, dead hands!

$DEITY may have been Satan.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/ten-surprising-fac...

Just as with chopsticks, this only works if the food contains the cultural knowledge that it will be manipulating with two points of contact, or food will be tossed/shoveled from the plate/bowl held in close proximity to the mouth. Forks allow scooping!

Perhaps a pincer where one tine has a semicircle, allowing it to be used as a spoon, when pinched?

Regardless, surely the future of food is hallucinogenic flavor crystals, matching your desired flavor, texture, smell, and atmosphere!

Forks aren't great at scooping.

My Asian family members require only chopsticks and a spoon (large) to eat anything, and spoons are much better for scooping.

Forks are great at scooping. Think Kraft Dinner, or mashed potatoes.

Forks can scoop but there's nothing a fork can scoop that a spoon cannot.

There's plenty that spoons can scoop that forks cannot.

I would argue that a fork can scoop certain foods more effectively than a spoon though. Especially when eating off of a plate rather than a bowl. Fork interfaces with the flat surface better.

Well, but a spoon cannot stab/hold a steak while I cut it, so forks still have their merit.

Actually you can stab, hold or even cut a steak with a good spoon (by good spoon I mean one made of stainless steel or titanium with good mechanical strength; there are some cheap spoons that would bend at any significant pressure applied on them), so a good spoon can also be used instead of a fork or instead of a knife, while those cannot be used instead of a spoon, for taking small particles or liquids, but it is obvious that a spoon is less convenient than the tools made specially for those tasks.

There are people, like myself, who believe that any food cutting should be done when cooking the food, not when eating it.

Because of this, I no longer use any table knives, which are anyway much worse for cutting food than the high quality super-sharp Japanese knives that I use for cooking.

I also no longer use any forks, because when the food is already cut in pieces of the right size, it is much easier to take them in a spoon than to stab them with a fork.

When I was young, I ate the food in the manner considered polite traditionally, with knife and fork, but after I grew older, using the most efficient and comfortable methods for doing anything has become much more important than caring about how something was traditionally done or caring about what others believe to be the right way.

After I have started to eat everything with a spoon, for a long time that was a subject of jokes and amusement for other family members. Nevertheless, eventually they all began to imitate me, after recognizing that it is indeed much more convenient than the traditional European manner of eating.

When getting a steak at a restaurant, I usually find myself mildly resentful that I'm stuck with a clumsy serrated knife against a non-flat plate, when the cook could have turned it into slices in about five seconds while plating.

> so a good spoon can also be used instead of a fork or instead of a knife

When I read this I pictured a guy sitting cutting and eating a steak with two spoons - one in each hand.

Indeed, that is much easier than it seems (with properly cooked meat), even if it will look very weird for any bystanders.

Dull table knives usually do not cut much better than a stainless steel spoon.

Any food that is so hard or so elastic that it cannot be cut with a spoon is probably not cooked well.

I sharpened a spoon once. It's not as useful as you would immediately assume.

In Asia, it's the chef's job to cut everything into bite size pieces, so the diner doesn't have to.

As with just about everything in this weird culture clash thread: YMMV.

What would your family do when presented with an uncut 16oz steak or chop?

It’s easy to eat food with chopsticks when the culture is designed around it. It’s easy to eat with a fork when the culture is designed around it.

In my experience in China, steaks or chops aren't served uncut. In cooking at home, I usually slice meat when serving it, rather than forcing each diner to slice it themselves.

That said, I've also eaten uncut steak with chopsticks and a knife.

Exactly: the food culture has adopted to chopsticks. Eating double cut pork chop with mashed potatoes using chopsticks would require substantially more effort than a fork and steak knife.

>> That said, I've also eaten uncut steak with chopsticks and a knife.

What kind/size steak? I said a very specific thing.

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head that would require a fork is spaghetti.

Amazingly, most Asian cultures have some experience with noodles. ;)

Growing up in the USA, I do love the visceral thrill of twirling a fork to wind up spaghetti. It's like a childhood memory! But I have also eaten spaghetti (yes, spaghetti noodles with marinara sauce) with chopsticks. It's easy!

Depends on the viscosity of what you are trying to scoop.

You can shovel with chopsticks a little by pushing the pad of your thumb between them. The tension keeps the points a little apart and works like a two pronged fork.

This seems 25% as effective as an eight pronged fork.

It isn't more than 33% as efficient as a fork, but honestly you don't need to shovel that often. There's usually a spoon as well, which is the undisputed champion of scooping.

An eight pronged fork? Those don't seem to exist as cutlery in general use (just pitchfork sized).

>Forks allow scooping!

Forks are awful at scooping! They're about as effective at scooping as a butter knife. Everything just falls off the sides. I admit the pincers also stink at scooping, but I just hate forks.

well, you can scoop green peas with fork with no trouble, for example. I'm sure there're asian people who can do it efficiently with chopsticks, of course, but I just can't imagine, how.

"I eat my peas with honey. I've done it all my life. It makes them taste quite funny, but it keeps them on my knife."

Peas are easy to eat with chopsticks. They are large and squishy. You can pick them a couple at a time. It actually goes quite fast if you are used to it. It’s easier than picking up the last few grains of rice from a bowl something people do all the time.

Other kitchen utensils you might not have considered using when plating and/or at the table:

• Small silicone tongs (e.g. https://www.amazon.ca/Fuyamp-Kitchen-Cooking-Silicone-Grilli...) — great for "family-style" service of oily spaghetti, salads, etc. Much better grip on saucy foods than laquered wooden "salad hands." No need to wind pasta around anything; just pick it up. Works much better than a spoon/ladle for breaking up a mound of sticky sweet-and-sour pork — you're pulling and twisting, rather than pushing.

• Kitchen shears — some foods (e.g. Korean short ribs) that are extremely annoying to slice/saw the meat off the bone of with a steak knife, can be scissored through with ease. Also work great for cutting open crab legs.

• Handheld cheese wire slicer (e.g. https://www.amazon.ca/Cheese-Slicer-Stainless-Steel-Cutter/d... — don't bother with the ones with a little roller in them for "depth of cut adjustment", it'll just get gummed up) — rather than pre-slicing your cheese for charcuterie snacking (and having it all dry out), you can just bring the block to the table and slice it as you need it.

• A mini-sized silicone spatula (e.g. https://www.amazon.ca/HLMY-Silicone-Resistant-Baking-Essenti...)... for spreading butter on toast. Yes, really. I just figured this one out yesterday, since I already had the spatula on hand from making eggs, and figured I may-as-well try. It works better than any butter knife I ever used; even the fancy wide-bladed "spreading knives." Much less butter left stuck to the utensil in the end. And it makes sense — buttering toast isn't all that different than icing a cake.

The best thing I've found for serving long pasta is the "pasta claw", a sort of deep spoon with fingers around the rim.

Why bother with the silicone tongs? Just get some plain Winco nine- and sixteen-inch tongs. They'll last forever in a home kitchen and you can use them with temperatures that would ruin the silicone cover.

You would use the silicone tongs to avoid scratching your delicate non-stick pan. And since they are temperature safe up to 480F, you are not that likely to ruin them with heat unless you are doing something silly. Personally, I use kitchen-supply-story tongs like you suggest, but these might serve a niche.

With few exceptions, your cooking oil would have to be smoking profusely before the pan is hot enough to damage silicone. At that point it's not quite hot enough to ruin the Teflon either.

Is this a parody? "Developer finds new tool -> is amazed -> thinks this is the future of X -> turns out it's not very useful outside one or two cases"

Sadly, no. Developers do this all the time. They set out to "change the world" without first understanding why the world is the way it is in the first place. Their going-in assumption is things are the way they are because everybody else isn't nearly as smart as them and just can't figure it out. Developer delivers solution - it falls flat on its face.

Some people respond to this repeated experience by learning to ask questions to better understand why things are the way they are and eventually those people may come to develop truly revolutionary technology.

Others just become serial entrepreneurs.

I have not tried pincers so keep that in mind. I appreciate that they are easier to use, however the economics come to play. Chopsticks, the disposable ones, the ones presented to most diners are incredibly cheap to make about 2 cents. Some diners prefer disposable cutlery for perceived sanitary reasons. So these pincers need to beat the economy of Chopsticks and consumer uptake.

I wonder if disposable pincers made from cheap wood are viable? Obviously, they would have a more complex shape than chopsticks, making them a bit more expensive. But maybe still cheap enough that the economics could work out if somebody figures out the marketing.

Instead of designing an entirely new disposable wood form, I wonder if you could just make an attachment like "Chopstick Helpers"[1] that worked with existing disposable chopsticks but had action more akin to pincers.

That being said, I'm definitely still in the "might as well just use chopsticks then" camp

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Inteliventor-6-FUNCHOP-Chopstick-Help...

gnicholas in another comment mentioned this. The pincers can only pick up items in a narrow range. Chopsticks are much more versatile. The limited range of motion is a drawback that exceeds the ease of use benefit.

> The pincers have a good grip, are easy to manoeuvre and are the right size and weight. They make it so much easier to eat anything from sushi to chicken wings.

Oh dear god, I'm both horrified and intrigued ... but mostly horrified ...

When you get past the horror, you may realize that chopsticks (or indeed pincers, I suppose) are a great way to eat all kinds of things you might normally eat with your fingers. It's nice to keep your fingers clean, sometimes. ;)

Eating Cheetos with chopsticks is an invention that, sadly, the West is too backwards to yet value.

I'm sure by the time we get to the Star Trek era chopsticks will be the standard cutlery when replicating up some cheese puffs, though.

Haha, yep, Cheetos are exactly where I started, after seeing someone else in my office do it.

I and the folks of chinese-descent in my family prefer wooden chopsticks over steel ones because of the better grip wood texture provides, so perhaps pincers are the future, but not the metal ones OP has. Wood might be more sustainable, too.

Wood is only more sustainable than metal if the wooden utensil is multiple-use.

Is that true? Metal chopsticks take much more energy to produce and ship than wooden ones, and need to be cleaned with soap, water, and energy after every use, compared to disposable wooden ones which could theoretically just be thrown in a hole on your garden.

I wonder what the break even point is for reusable metal vs disposable wooden ones is? 10 uses? 1000? and if metal chopsticks actually make it to that stage before being retired/lost/broke.

Not that merely environmental impact is the only question, I'm just curious if this analysis has ever been done.

Related: I once saw it claimed that wooden cutting boards had better-than-expected antiseptic properties (better than with plastic IIRC), despite knife marks providing locations to harbor debris.

Plastic also gets knife marks.

I think the difference is the plastic goes in the dishwasher. But you’re right, I also read that news piece about wood being slightly antiseptic.

I don't know if it's just a folk theory, but I've also heard that using end grain for the surface of a cutting board is better than the surface being across the grain which is more common and natural. When you cut across the grain, there's no natural action to seal the cut, but when you cut end grain, the natural swelling of the fibers from moisture closes the gap in a sense.

There's also the energy of production.

I think these pincers are textured to provide grip

Still not as convenient as eating with your hands like we Indians do.

South Asia and Africa using starches/hands to eat is the biggest brain move.

Years ago on our first anniversary I took my SO to a sushi place as she'd never been to one.

The waiter told us that outside the regular cutlery they offer a middle option for those who want the chopstick experience without the hassle.

I opted for that and the guy fashioned a set of picers from chopsticks and rubber bands on the spot.

Guy looked like he did that every day.

Since so many of the comments here are about chopsticks, I'm curious what folks think the proportion of people in western countries who can use chopsticks is? I assume it follows roughly the introduction of Asian foods into the locales where people live?

I learned in my late teens; prior to that, there was really only one Asian restaurant around where I grew up, and it was more of a buffet-style Chinese restaurant where most of the entries were variations on General Tso's chicken or other Americanized menu items. My parents did acquire a taste for Asian cuisine, but never learned to use chopsticks. But we also have relatives of a similar age who literally have never tried Asian food at all, and I'm assuming have also never tried to use a pair of chopsticks.

my guess is proficiency is 30%.

I have summarized this comment section in a meme that I titled "Chop-Cels be seething over Pincer-Chads."

Url: https://imgur.com/a/dxgI1Mx

Of course, this is needless. Pincers don't threaten chopsticks, nor will they replace them.

Pincers are an opportunity to learn to stuff the face in a new way. If I get pincers, I anticipate they will be fun to learn, and I will gain unique food handling skills with them, like I did with chopsticks, forks, knives, and other food tools.

> They make it so much easier to eat anything from sushi to chicken wings.

Easier than ... using your hand?

I find eating western-style salads to be easier with chopsticks than with a fork.

I hate forks as much as the next person (compared to spoons and knives, forks are far worse at performing their primary job), but I'm not sure about these pincers. For one thing they look more difficult to clean (stuff would get stuck at the base).

But forks can scoop, poke, and cut. I'd rather the versatility than multiple task-specific utensils.

Sure, but if you also had a spoon and knife then the fork is really just trying to compete with the knife at cutting and the spoon at scooping. It loses both of those competitions and is relegated to being a poker. The fork is a jack of all trades and a master of none.

Didn't you just define a superior use case for each of the three utensils? Why does the fork lose? I can't really think of any meal where a knife on its own is useful. If I could only pick one to eat all my meals with, I think the fork would be most useful.

Interesting. If I had to pick one utensil to eat with in a domestic setting (of the typical Western three) it would be a fork.

In a more general or survival setting I’d choose a knife.

In a domestic setting, I'd argue a spoon is quite a bit more versatile especially in the context of scooping liquids. Anything you can poke and lift with a fork you can probably scoop and lift with a spoon instead.

A fork is arguably most useful in conjunction with a knife because it's generally easier to hold foods for cutting with a fork than with a spoon.

You can still drink liquids without any utensil from whatever vessel they’re in, in most cases.

Pour one out for our humble cafeteria friend the spork.

These are actually plating tweezers. When I visited a lot of modern restaurants in Spain about ten years ago, these were pretty common to appear at three table for a course or two. So these have been around for a while now and haven't spread much outside the kitchen. I have some of these, but rarely use them to eat. In a regular kitchen these are really great for stuff like getting pickles or anchovies out of a jar

I've consider myself fairly proficient with chopsticks, but this got me thinking: would reverse pincers be an improvement? Ones that have a spring to hold closed, versus holding open. My one beef with chopsticks is that it requires somewhat more holding strength to retain something between the two ends than a fork.

So food grade needle-nose pliers?

I think the issue will be that not all pincers (and other similar kitchen utensils) are not all made the same. Some are much harder to squeeze than others. Some don't open as wide, so I may not be able to get it around a large chunk of sushi. With chopsticks I have neither of these problems (although chopsticks do vary in other ways).

Eating Panda Express style Chinese food with rice and a couple of stir frys? Try putting it in a plate, and use a fork and spoon to eat. Fork pushes components+rice into spoon, spoon goes into mouth. No more stuff falling off like when only a fork is used. Fork also used to stab when needed and spoon used to slice when needed.

Thank me later

that's how you eat in Thailand

though not usable for cutting harder pieces of meat, so not really versatile for all cuisines

Exactly, I’m from Malaysia :)

Kitchen tweezers are more expensive and less durable to make than forks and chopsticks so I doubt this will ever happen.

I'd actually quite like these.

I have fairly poor manual dexterity (I struggle to use a spoon sometimes!) due to tremors. Chopsticks are really, really hard to use for me, and "trainers" make them about on par with a fork or spoon for my situation. A solid piece of metal would be easier to clean.

With these pincers you lose multiple degrees of freedom v. chopsticks, and while those degrees of freedom make chopsticks harder in some respects, they also allow chopsticks to grip large and irregularly-shaped items with which pincers would have a much more difficult time.

Between sticks with prongs, sticks with mouth shaped bowls, and sticks with sticks, unless culinary art sees major advancements I think we’ve got it covered for the next 1000 years lol.

Of course according to the Onion, Yum Corp will being dumping Taco Bell nacho grande chees-oid solution into our troughs.

;^P

To me the difference comes in with the knife, not the fork. In the west we get for example large pieces of meat/veg that you need to cut yourself, vs for example in Korea where everything once prepared is already made into bite sized pieces.

maybe it would be even easier with an adjustable crescent wrench and pliers?

An electician, an electronics engineer, and a plumber walk into a sushi bar ...

Single prong pincers would not let me hold my food in position while cutting, it would need more than one tine on each side.

Pincer-type serving utensils are common and useful. Salad bars use them. They seldom make it to the table, though.

reminds me of the snactiv's from sharktank: https://snactiv.com :)

The spork will not be challenged!

Tell me you're bad at using chopsticks by praising training chopsticks.

Food tweezers.

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