Chopsticks
2 min readYou may well wonder whether chopsticks are essential for Chinese cooking: the answer is yes and no!
Basically, there are only two types of chopsticks available: the very long ones – up to 41cm (16″) long, made of bamboo or wood; these are used for cooking only, rather like a pair of tongs. Then there are the standard-length chopsticks – between 25-28cm (10–11″) long – made of bamboo, lacquered wood, or heat-resistant plastic. These are mainly used at the table, but they can also be very useful in the kitchen, such as for mixing (instead of using a fork or spoon), and for egg-beating (instead of using an egg whisk). So, it is not absolutely essential to have chopsticks in the kitchen.
When it comes to using chopsticks for eating, I think it is essential that you should have them at the table. This is not purely an aesthetic question, but also a practical point – partly because all Chinese food is prepared in such a way that it is easily picked up by chopsticks; also, since you can only pick up a small morsel at a time, you really have to chew the food well before swallowing it down, thus chopsticks help the digestion as well as increasing your appreciation of the flavour of the food.
Learning to use chopsticks is quite simple and easy – use to help you. Just relax and don’t fix your eyes on your fingers, but rather concentrate on the food at the tip of the chopsticks – by the way, make sure the two chopsticks are level with each other, if the two sticks are not aligned, then it becomes very difficult to pick anything up.
