Food you don't know how to eat properly...

[Idlewild]

@Lamar Mundane

I have a hard time with mangoes.

Get a sharp knife, a cutting board, and ample napkins etc. Stand the mango on the roughly blunt end, or lie it on its side, er, anything as long as you can get some idea of the axis of the stone inside. You want to slice the meat of the mango off the stone in two chunks, one for each side, cutting as close to the stone as you can get. Then, score the flesh, invert the skin, and voila, you can go ahead and either scrape the cubes of mango off the skin where you scored them, or just pick the whole thing up and eat it.

The stone will now have a ring of flesh and skin left around it where you cut the slabs off. It’s pretty much impossible to do anything elegant with this bit, but you can still cut it off the stone and eat it anyway.

If the mango is properly ripe there’s going to be juice everywhere, this is normal, and is what the napkins are for.

On preview - I still like my method better but the food network instructions might make mine a bit clearer!

[Suburban_Plankton]

@Cowgirl Jules

Mmmm, artichokes.

DeVena, presuming they’re cooked already, set them up stem side down on your plate. Peel off the really tough first outside layer of leaves, if present, and throw those away. Not worth it.

Then take the individual leaves off one at a time, and dip the fleshy end in something yummy. I like plain mayonnaise, and some people like garlic butter and whatnot. After you dip it, flip it upside down and scrape the bottom third or so off with your bottom teeth. Throw out the top. Go around and around and around… sorry got a little distracted there.

When you get in to the really tender leaves, you can just bite off the bottom end. Once you get in to the center where the tiny leaves have sharp purple tips, run a dull knife around the perimeter where the leaf bases meet the bottom of the artichoke, or heart. Pull that off and chuck it, or else you’ll learn why it’s called a “choke”. Now take what’s left, and scrape off any stringy bits frmo the outside of the base with your dull knife. Cut the rest up and eat it - it’s the very best part, and why you went to all that work with the darn leaves in the first place.
Mmmm.

Jules - over the hill from the artichoke capital of the world

This is precisely the reason I don’t eat artichokes. Any food that takes three paragraphs just to explain how to eat it is not worth the trouble. I’ll eat artichoke hearts (in salad, on pizza, etc.), but I refuse to eat whole artichokes on the grounds that it’s just too complicated.

[SolGrundy]

@Ukulele Ike

A lot of various Asian food.

I’ll be digging in with the ol’ chopsticks, and the server will stop by, sniff, and say, “You should wrap it in the LETTUCE LEAF.”

Or “You should PLACE YOUR ENTIRE FACE INTO THE PLATE.”

I run into the same thing all the time. I’m just trying not to be such an Ugly American, and it always comes back to bite me in the ass.

After living in the SF Bay Area for so long, I’ve gotten pretty good with a set of chopsticks and can handle just about everything you try to serve to me. I’ve really, really gotten into Japanese curry, and there’s one place in Berkeley that serves the best I’ve ever had. It took me a while, but I finally figured out how to eat the whole thing with chopsticks.

Then I go to Japan, order it in a restaurant there, and they serve it on a plate with a big spoon, no chopsticks. Turns out that’s how you’re supposed to eat it.

I’m still not sure how to handle ramen, though. Even after watching Tampopo.

[Adoptamom_II]

Another delicious way to enjoy artichokes is to stuff them with a combination of italian bread crumbs, parmasean and romano cheese drizzled with olive oil and steamed until each leaf pulls away from the body easily… oh my goodness! Heaven on a plate

Crawfish - another delightful food! FilmGeek offered great instructions on how to eat them, and yes most of us in the deep south suck the heads because that’s where all the juicy yummy spices settle. Additional good eating are small red potatoes, corn on the cob and mushrooms which have been boiled in with the crawfish. Slather with real butter and inhale! Crusty french bread tops the meal off.

Now I’m hungry!

[Cicero]

Here in Australia, I’ve always found it difficult to look composed when I am eating roast koala. I never know whether to start at the ears or the paws.

[SmackFu]

I hope I don’t know how to eat crabs properly, because if I do, that’s an awful lot of work for not much gain. Seriously, I’ll just buy a lobster instead.

[Rick]

@Suburban Plankton

This is precisely the reason I don’t eat artichokes. Any food that takes three paragraphs just to explain how to eat it is not worth the trouble. I’ll eat artichoke hearts (in salad, on pizza, etc.), but I refuse to eat whole artichokes on the grounds that it’s just too complicated.

It doesn’t take 3 paragraphs. Here it is in one
Pull off leaf. Dip into butter or mayo. scrape leaf off on the bottom of your top teeth. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Now how hard was that?

[matt_mcl]

@NinjaChick

Now what? Just let the salad dressing pool so the first few bites are “dressing with a little lettuce” and the rest is dry? There are chunks of lettuce, tomato (I despise grape tomatos just for that reason), etc that are too big to eat. Do you break out your knife? [/size]

You can use a knife if there are pieces of salad too big to deal with. If the table is set properly, the outermost knife at the time you are eating the salad course will be the correct one.

As for sufficiently distributing the dressing, I eat one of the dressing-covered bits, to expose the ‘undressed’ ones underneath, then eat those, dunking them in the dressing pooled on top of the salad.

[Hunter_Hawk]

@cher3

I’ve got one: How do you eat fresh lychees? Our co-op has them sometimes, and I’ve been tempted, but I have no idea how to attack one.

First, make sure the skins are nice and red, and are nice and flexible. If they’re brown and feel kind of like a thin shell, the lychees probably aren’t very good.

Assuming you have some good lychees, I do something like the following:
[ol]
[li]Start with a bag-o-lychees.[/li][li]Get a bowl to toss the skins and pits in.[/li][li]Get a few napkins or paper towels. The lychees are juicy.[/li][li]Grab a lychee. Hold it with the stem facing up.[/li][li]If there’s a stem on the lychee, grab and bend it so it breaks the skin of the lychee. If there’s no stem, use your thumbnail to pierce the skin near the stem end.[/li][li]Peel the skin off. It should come off very easily.[/li][li]Note the translucent white flesh. There’s usually a big pit in the lychee, but sometimes you get lucky and the pit is small and withered. This is a good thing, because it means you get more of the good stuff.[/li][li]Bite the flesh off the pit. It’ll take a couple of bites. Make sure not to bite into the pit, because it’s bitter and nasty-tasting.[/li][li]Wipe your hands and face if necessary.[/li][li]Goto 4.[/li][/ol]