How to Eat Rice With Chopsticks

Learning to use chopsticks can be frustrating and sometimes messy. Fortunately, it's easy to eat rice with chopsticks if you know how. Buy an inexpensive pair and practice a little at home before you go out to eat.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Using Chopsticks

1. Place 1 chopstick between your thumb and index finger. Let it lie against the fold of skin with about 1/3 extending behind your thumb and rest the tip of the chopstick on your ring finger.

2. Hold the second chopstick like a writing pen, between your thumb and index finger. Use your middle finger to keep it steady.

3. Keep the chopstick on your ring finger still and move the other chopstick to touch it. If the tips don't meet, make an adjustment.

4. Pinch a bite of foot between the tips and bring it to your mouth.

Eating Rice

5. Hold the rice bowl in your left hand and your chopsticks in your right hand.

6. Bring the bowl close to your mouth.

7. Grab clumps of rice with the chopsticks and put them in your mouth. Any grains that fall off the chopstick should land back in the bowl and not in your lap or on the table.

Tips & Warnings

• Typically, rice served with Asian cuisine is sticky, making eating it with chopsticks easy. Trying to eat American style rice, in which the grains don't stick together, is much more difficult.
• It's considered bad manners to stab your food, use your chopsticks to drum on the table or to take food from a communal plate or bowl using your chopsticks.
• Never stick your chopsticks in your food so they stand upright. This is done when setting a place for a deceased ancestor; if you do the same you are wishing someone at the table dead.