Fork that!

In My Humble Opinion
1

Having watched a great deal of UK Kitchen Nightmares recently, I noticed that Europeans hold their forks differently than us Yanks. Honestly, it looks more comfortable with tines pointed down when feasible. I read about the zig-zag American style in which the fork and knife are switched and read this:

When daughter read the bolded sentence her immediate response was, “That’s not fair. Lefties are left-handed. They should it do it whatever way they like.” She’s not a lefty, but I agree with her. Why so dogmatic about which hand the fork is in?

I’m all for etiquette, but given you are not spewing food out of your mouth or hocking a loogey into your napkin, does it really make you a heathen if you use a different utensil style than others?

I’ve decided to switch to the European way of fork handling and I’m going to put comfort before priss…not that I’ll be dining out anytime in the near future. What say you forkers?

2

I’m right-handed, but I often eat left-handed. Which is to say, I’ll hold my fork in my left hand, knife in right hand to cut the meat. Then, not switch hands to actually eat. I just sit my knife down and eat with the hand the fork is already in.

I never really thought twice about it (though I’ve never even been to Europe) until my MIL noticed me doing it for the first time, and remarked “I never knew you were left-handed!”

It ties back, I think, to a time when I did home health nursing for a living. Many of my patents had had strokes that paralyzed the right side of their bodies, and I was astounded at how many of them could not perform basic, large-motor-skill functions left-handed (like eating, brushing their teeth, etc.) At that point, I avowed to learn to do everything I could left-handed, just so I’d be able to should the need ever arise. Then it began to seem natural to me, and since then, I don’t switch the fork into my right hand to eat if I had meat to cut up.

I never heard until today that it’s “less elegant” to do it this way. Seems more logical to me.

Oh, well, I’m a slob by nature anyway. . . :stuck_out_tongue:

3

Interesting. Chef Albrich describes American-style as just the opposite of the previous link, but the switching is still there.

I’m right-handed, but I can easily use a knife with my left hand. I can also use my fork left-handed, but it feels slightly unnatural. Either way, I can’t see the point in switching the utensils.

norinew, I’m a slob, too. I find it interesting, too, that your MIL noticed which hand you were holding the fork in. I guess it makes sense that older generations would pick up on that type of thing.

When you cut meat, obviously tines are down, but as you bring it to your lips, do you twirl the fork so the tines are up or do you eat it with tines down?

4

I eat in the European style (and I didn’t even know that till I opened this thread). If I need to turn the tines up to scoop peas or get that last morsel of mashed spud I’ll swap the fork over to my right hand and lay the knife down on the side of the plate. It’s almost exactly as the link describes, except the the *default *position is; fork left, tines down. The fork only migrates when basically the meal is almost done and I’m just hoovering up the scraps.

AFAIK, at this end of the world, even that last migration of fork is frowned upon in polite society. One should press ones peas onto the fork with the knife correctly positioned in the right hand and leave the last few bits on the plate rather than scraping them up like a starving peasant.

5

IANASECAC (I am not a syndicated expert culinary advice columnist) yet this very subject has pissed off this 34 year old male raised in the sticks to no end over the years causing me to toss more than one newspaper across the room (I am not kidding). Miss Manners has fucked this one up time and time again as have others.

American style cutting and eating food dictates that you cut and then switch hands. Retarded is the nicest term I can use for the people that advocate this. It makes no sense on the surface and it gets even worse in practice. It takes extra effort for no benefit whatsoever, it looks clumsy, and it causes unnesseary plate clanking which can violate local noise abatement laws if it is a large table. It does work well as birth control for people like me however.

The Europeans have the technique down when it comes to no switching of hands but they fuck it up as well. Tines down is retarded if we can reuse that word. It looks like a caveman with a combination of Down Syndrome and Asperger’s is eating at your table. The fork is a very simple tool and not hard to master. It is made to be used tines up which is why it can serve as a spoon for thicker, juicer parts of the meal. We should have given up stabbing meat when hunter gatherer societies faded out yet there are still millions of people trying to kill their supermarket steak for good measure.

My close family consists of both Europeans and Americans. Some aren’t even that bright yet the obvious never escaped them when it comes to this matter. Someone has to be the expert so make a note that you have just read the definitive opinion on this subject.

– This ends this episode of cultural abominations

Shagnasty

6

As for blowing my nose on my napkin, if it comes down to a choice between that, or my sleeve, or your sleeve, or the tablecloth, or letting snot drip down my face, well why the fuck is this even a question?

7

How about excusing yourself and working your way to the restroom? Seeing as how men don’t generally carry tissues with them anymore, I guess you’re just going to have to gross someone out if you sneeze unexpectedly: use your hand and then go wash up. But if you feel your nose getting ready to drain, I’d say you just go deal with it before you have to use your napkin.

Shagnasty, you had me at the beginning railing against so-called etiquette and the “correct” way to use eating utensils, but then you lost me when you started to dictate, in perfect Miss Mannerese, how the fork should be used tines up at all times. You’re just as bad as Miss Manners.

8

That’s very interesting. Having been reared in the Southern US, I have had to endure many etiquette courses throughout my childhood/adolescence and the one thing that stuck, because it was so different from how most people actually do it is the tines pointing down. That is the “proper” way to eat. One must never use the fork in the manner in which one would use the spoon (such as scooping up peas) if it cannot be skewered by the tines (in their proper downward-facing position), then one should use one’s spoon, so as not to appear boorish. Meh. YMMV, but I’ve always eaten tines down. As for the use of the right hand to hold the fork? That keeps you using the correct utensils at the correct times, provided you’re actually worried about that. Also, it beckons back to the age in which one wiped one’s ass with the left hand, and never allowed that hand to touch food or food utensils. Obviously, this rule is a bit lax in the US and most of the Western world, but still very much enforced/looked down on in the Middle East.

ETA – for blowing one’s nose – if one cannot excuse one’s self from the table, then one should discreetly cover both nose and mouth and wipe the offending drips away as inconspicuously as possible. :smiley:

9

Van Morrison is Irish and I think that may influence some of your opinions. The Irish people tend to stab their meat and aren’t known for their culinary traditions so I am not sure if that should be considered. I am a Brown Eyed Boy yet nobody ever wrote a song about me so I consider myself relatively free of most cultural, culinary taint. I have issued a few culinary proclamations over the years, some of which resulted in Pit threads that almost destroyed the fabric of the board. Ordering milk in a bar is the most notable and resulted in a full melt-down. This one is much easier in that it is both logical, practical, and the most elegant in the view of the other guests.

There are about 5 topics in this world that I can call upon when I am sitting there peacefully and yet want to get angry. This is one of them (the others don’t come from manners books). Miss Manners screwed this one up big time which had a domino effect to screw up the rest of American society. We may be out of Iraq without her verdict by now for all I now. All I know is that it is very wrong on many levels. The only other column that made me almost as angry is scooping soup to the front of the bowl and then up and back again but she didn’t win that battle. I think you will find that most Dopers are bright in a seeing eye dog type of way but are still very unmannered and start to fight not knowing what they don’t know against hopeless odds and reason. The crusade continues yet again.

10

After reading this thread, I’m switching to chopsticks.

11

Thank you for posting in my thread, Shagnasty. It’s made me smile. I can assure you, I am not Irish, though I am brown eyed, and I enjoy Van Morrison and a good, stiff pint or two.

It seems to me that forks were designed for both stabbing and scooping as they can manage both passably well. If you never stab, stick to spoons, you don’t really need a fork. You can hold down a piece of steak you’re cutting just fine with a spoon, if you press hard enough. Forks do work much better on salad greens, however. You impale the lettuce on your fork, no? As for the scooping business, I prefer to scoop small vegetables using my knife onto my fork. Incredibly, dinner forks can hold a respectable number of peas on top of the flat tines and this method doesn’t require repeatedly poking at the plate for individual peas. Why, yes, I do use my fork as a shovel. Or maybe a frontloader, which, strangely, also has tines. But it’s probably more like a spork.

Back to the tines: salad forks typically have three tines and are slightly longer. That makes this fork superior for stabbing, not so great for scooping. This makes sense; salads are not scoopable. Dinner forks have four tines, giving the flat top surface better holding capability and yet allow sauces to drip through leaving just enough sauce to coat the food, but not too much that the morsels’ own flavor drown in the sauce’s. But dinner forks are still pointy, making it easy to hold the meat and lift it to your mouth in one clean movement. No fumbling around, switching hands, is necessary, I agree. Twirling from tines down to tines up may also appear affected to some as it serves no useful purpose beyond aesthetics.

Now, I give you the opportunity to laugh at me, because at home (when nobody is around to give me grief) I hold the fork with my thumb and forefinger at the base of the handle. The end of the handle rests lightly on my fingers curled underneath it, while my palm prevents the fork from tipping downward. I don’t grip it, I cradle it. If I am stabbing meat, it’s tines down from plate to mouth. If I am scooping, it’s tines up from plate to mouth. This is the most comfortable way I’ve held a fork, though I have yet to scrunch up the courage to do it in public. I generally don’t take well to being ridiculed for my “heathen” ways. But my hands thank me. I’m gauging reaction as to whether its time to my take this mannerism public.

In any case, explain to me again how a fork is not multipurpose.

Off-topic, is it okay to order milk in a White Russian? I know it’s supposed to take cream, but I don’t like the gloppy feeling of cream in my mouth. I should maybe just to Vodka Gimlets and avoid creamy drinks altogether.

12

One of the advantages of being male is that if the meal was sufficiently delicious, instead of chasing those last drops of gravy, sauce etc , I have the ability to place both the knife and fork down, grasp the plate with both hands, and then lick off those last few extra tasty greasy bits. I usually then need wipe off my nose and chin with the back of my hand, then wipe off the back of my hand with a nearby object. This licking technique saves rinsing off the plate for those without a dog or cat :eek:

If you all don’t mind a hijack, why don’t I get invited over a second time? :smack:

Dave

13

If someone ridicules you for holding your fork in an “unacceptable” manner, the hell with them. It’s not like your losing control of your food and hurling it across the table violently.

Is it just me, or are fancy etiquette rules just a way to make people feel superior?

14

Exactly. Pragmatic and civilized.

15

I have always used my left hand to hold the fork while I eat. My dad tried to break me of the habit, but it seemed like a silly thing to do - cut your food, put down your knife, eat, cut more food, etc.

Many Europeans have commented on my European style of eating.

16

Well, as I said, I hold the fork in my left hand, even after I’m done cutting my meat. But I do use it as a “scoop” as well as for piercing food. In fact, as I was reading the rest of the thread, I was using a fork to scoop julienne potato casserole into my face!

I have often suspected there’s a superiority in making tasks harder than they have to be! Why do the whole hand-switching thing when it’s so much easier to just keep the fork in the left hand? Then, when I refuse to play “by the rules”, people can sniff that I’m just “taking the easy way out”. WTF? I mean, if there is an effective, “easy way out”, wouldn’t it be stupid to not take it?

My MIL encountered this same attitude when she moved into a neighborhood of newly-built houses, each one equipped with a dishwasher in the kitchen. The other housewives in the neighborhood looked down on her because she actually (gasp!) used her dishwasher instead of washing the dishes by hand!!

17

Now this one I can answer, because my husband is left-handed.

When a lefty uses his left hand to eat at a table full of righties, there are elbow issues. 70% of the time, we remember to do the “Lefty Dance” before we sit down, and wrangle him a seat on the leftmost end of the table, so he’s not elbowing people in the arm whilst they’re trying to balance peas on their fork in their right hand.

At a formal dinner, of course, seats are preassigned. There’s no polite way to mess up the hostess’s careful planning. So he’s got to eat righty or elbow tango with strangers. If we did a lot of formal dining, he’d get better at eating right handed, I’m sure.

Me? I eat right naturally, and left if we’ve forgotten to do the Lefty Dance and he ends up on my right.

18

Yes, that’s a very valid point. While I mostly eat with my left hand, if I’m in the position of my elbow getting in someone else’s way, I will switch to the right hand. Often, when we go out to eat as a family, my middle daughter (who is left-handed) will sit right next to me. Works very well, as we’re both eating left-handed. Then my hubby and youngest daughter, who both eat right-handed, will sit across the table from us.

19

Well, yes and no. In reality, etiquette rules began as a means to appear to be superior to others, but a truly well-versed-in-etiquette individual will tell you that the rules are more guidelines. If I throw a party for my MIL, who is a redneck to the core no matter how much she tries to feign superiority, as a good hostess, I would hold my fork in the same manner in which she holds hers. If she slurps her soup, I should too. One makes one’s guests feel as though they (the guest) are superior, if one is a good hostess.

It’s kind of funny, if you start looking into other cultures. I’d read (and any Asian dopers, correct me if I read incorrectly) that in many Asian cultures, it is considered proper to slurp one’s soup. The reasoning being that by slurping, you will not accidentally take a big mouthful of steaming hot soup and reflexively spit it out on your host or his/her furniture. Obviously, we “more civilised” Westerners consider slurping “rude” and “boorish.” Again, when in Rome and all that.

20

Thanks, Lit. I’d be happy to have a meal at your place. I’ll bring the wine. :slight_smile:

And yurking in the lap of the Japanese PM is an embarassing faux pas. I’ll bet that translates across the cultural divide. :smiley: