Underground Journal

Using Your Sushi Set: Chopsticks

Although many westerners are a bit hesitant to learn how to use chopsticks, they are passing up a really useful and rewarding skill in the world of gastronomy. Learning how to eat with chopsticks is a great way to have an authentic sushi-eating experience, and they are really conducive to slowing your eating down and really savoring each roll’s flavor. Contrary to what many people believe, learning how to use chopsticks does not have to take a long time to master, especially when using sushi sets at home for practice, without the fear of embarrassment that would come with trying this out for the first time at a nice sushi bar. Here are a few helpful tips that break the process down into manageable parts:

1. The first step is learning the placement of each stick in their respective parts of the hand.  Take the first chopstick and place it in the crook between the thumb and forefinger of your dominant hand (the one you’ll be most comfortable eating with).  Make sure the thumb is roughly one third of the way down the thicker end of the chopstick.
2. Rest the chopstick on your ring finger so that it is lodged pretty securely between your thumb and index finger.
   
3. The other stick is simply rested on the tip of your thumb and held into place with your middle finger, similarly to how one would hold a pencil.
4. To use the chopsticks, use your index and middle fingers as pinchers so that the ends of the two chopsticks come together at a point.

Go ahead and practice this a little bit, but don’t stress about it.  The best time to practice with with a Japanese sushi set of your own so that you get the full experience.  It’s one thing to practice with chopsticks as a dry run with no food, but it’s an entirely different (and more satisfying) thing to try this skill out with some delicious sushi!

(0) Comments Permalink