How To: Eat Rice with Chopsticks

I’ve been eating with chopsticks my entire life and it has always been second nature to me, except when it comes to eating rice. I usually try to pick up a few grains, unsuccessfully, then put my tail between my legs and reach for a spoon. I finally decided it was time to learn how to eat rice with chopsticks, so I started doing my research.

To my surprise, after watching this video below, I thought it looked easy. I promptly ordered my Chinese take-out and tried it for myself. It worked! I was so excited about this new discovery that I knew I had to share it with you.

In order to learn how to eat rice with chopsticks, first you have to learn how to properly hold and use chopsticks. I’ve seen people use chopsticks in all different funny ways. My son prefers to stick them in his ears instead of eat with them.

This first video will show you the basic chopstick technique, then we’ll move on to the rice.

Tip: Once you learn that you only move one chopstick, and the other one stays still the whole time, it becomes much easier.

Now that we’ve learned how to use chopsticks correctly, let’s learn how to eat rice with chopsticks. This always baffled me until I watched this video. I was doing it all wrong before, but not anymore!

Tip: I learned that it is considered polite in the East to lift your bowl of rice close to your mouth when eating with chopsticks. Of course, that solves half the problem since the distance to your mouth will be shortened. I would not have thought of that since here in the West, it is considered impolite to lift your bowl to your mouth when eating.

I’m sure there are many people that use chopsticks every day that might have some tips of their own to share. If so, please leave it in a comment below so we can all learn from you!