So how do you hold a fork?
 

At least I was taught to keep my elbows off the table ;).

But I hold a fork with the tines curving up .... and I don't care what anyone thinks about it either :D.

How about you .... tines up or down if you're stabbing a piece of meat and putting it in yer "pie hole"?

I hold it like the dude in the "Psycho" shower scene.

With my fingers?

Everyone I see on TV, stabs a piece of meat and puts it in their mouth with the fork tines curving downward .... a European thing.

Can't recall anyone I've ever been around doing it that way .... a southern thang :D?

Tines curved up .

I never stab meat with a fork....one of the plastic tines breaks off every time.

Right, I think I've only seen tines curved down on TV/movies. And I think that I've seen (again in TV/movies) where the tines down people will use it tines up part of the time, but then tines down for a bite of steak.

I've never used a fork tines down for any purpose that I can remember.

https://compote.slate.com/images/ea4...a7df625645.jpg

https://t4.ftcdn.net/jpg/00/06/38/37...1R64dLKbd6.jpg

but a REAL man
https://t4.ftcdn.net/jpg/02/02/48/05...x6Iee7sBDZ.jpg

Yea, them funny folks in furin countries on TV and movies do it with the tines down. I figured that started in Australia, and caught on for some reason. ;)

True story, back when i still lived at home, I met a chick that was French, named Sophie, and in the US to learn better English, and experience American culture. Her mom was rich and very upper crust, and "proper" and came to Alabama to visit her daughter.

We were having a 4th of July family party at my parents lake cabin at Lake Martin, in AL. Imagine a 100% typical American family, shorts, barefoot, boat at the dock, drinking from cans of soda or beer, a hamburger and fried chicken meal and kids laughing. And this aristocrat French lady that did not speak but a little English in the middle. We all dig into the burgers and chicken with our fingers, and forks are used for baked beans or potato salad only.

Sophie said something to her mom as she came outside with an astonished tone in her voice. We all looked at Sophie as an explanation as to what was said. She had told her mom it was the first time ever that she had seen her mom's feet. Her mom just could not bring herself to eat fried chicken with her fingers and was trying to use a knife and fork on a chicken leg and her hamburger.

Finally quoted the old adage, "when in Rome do as the Romans do" and her mom put down the knife and fork and held a chicken leg and bit into it. She said she had many firsts that day and felt like an American. He first time to be barefoot outdoors, first time to drinking right from a container and not from a glass, first time to eat with her fingers, and the first time to be on a small boat in a lake and on and on.

Me? Left hand, right hand, tines up, tines down, tines sideways if I'm sawing away at something tough, tines pointed toward someone when I'm embellishing a point of conversation....

From what I understand, the British pretty much hold the fork in their left hand, tines always down. Europeans will spin the fork (left hand always) depending on the food - tines up for rice, or peas or such but tines down for stabbing meat.

I was always taught that you should use a fork for pretty much everything that it would work for. I guess the only things that you wouldn't use a fork for are liquidy/saucy things that would run through a fork. I always wondered why bother with the spoon at all and thought that was a silly rule.

I use mine correctly. I even know which fork to use. I can explain these finer points to you, but, if you haven’t learned by now, you don’t want to know them.

Years ago I was eating dinner at The French Room in Dallas, which is a fairly extravagant restaurant that uses a European model of service. Waiters and attendants stand at the walls around the perimeter of the room, waiting to be needed. I briefly used my dinner knife to put a some butter on a little piece of bread, and then I replaced the dinner knife onto the crystal knife rest. Sadly, for me, I had placed the knife on the crystal knife rest with the blade facing to the right. An attendant leaped into action and flipped my knife over, so that it faced the correct direction.

True story.

I like to think he saw you were capable of using the tools correctly and he wanted to help! (But it is weird that he would do that!)

All European scenes of dinner,show people eating,holding the forks in left hand and using their knives as adding to the food on the knife. Never grew up using that technight.

Well, you can be an American and cut a piece of meat, holding the meat with your fork in your left hand and the knife in your right, then use the knife to hold down the meat while you dislodge the fork, then put the knife down and transfer the fork to your right hand, then stab the meat and eat it.

Bonus points if you hold your fork tines up and your elbow up in the air, when holding it with your left hand to cut the meat.

Of course, if you don’t want to look like an American jackass, do it like the Europeans do, and nobody will notice you. Just don’t use your knife like the Brits, on things like peas and potatoes.

A very basic lesson for the boorish bastages that infest this place.

Tabs would be disappointed in you but, perhaps, not surprised.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_R70v6xDr_s

^^^^ LOL ... I hold my fork in my left hand :D.

signed....

Lefty

edited: I actually got to about 30 seconds in.... meh ;)

Stick to eating barbecue.

You are assuming we give a fork.

Just use a spork.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1681489768.jpg

It folds up so you can carry it with you and always be ready to to shovel in the food! Just lick it clean and put it back in your pocket, after a good belch to let the cook know you approved of the meal.

Done.

I had to quit eating with a spoon ... nearly shot my head off :D!

I don't think I have ever done that in my life

One hopes that you haven’t, but it is readily on display, every day at any restaurant in America.

I know for a fact that I haven't ....

I just got lucky tho' .... wasn't trying to impress some pretentious azzhole either :D

Depends if I am stabbing their hands as a warning or somewhere else.

I know someone that uses a fork like a shovel. Can butter a slice of bread with the back of a spoon while holding the bread with the other hand. Hold food down on the plate with the flat of a dinner knife and cut with a steak knife at the same time.

Seriously..someone I know that was born without thumbs. He does not do anything like you or me with his hands but he makes it look easy and fluid.

Has a sense of humor too. He will ask for a straw for the peas.

I cut my meat/steaks/etc in one round. Fork in my left hand with tines down and cut it with my right hand. Then I use my right hand with tines up to shovel into my face.

Always cut with the right (knife), fork always starts in the left, tines flipped down. But after that it's an American free-for-all, left, right saw, tines spinning. Mrs. D accuses me of European tines down, but I don't consciously do any of these things.

I keep my fork "European Style" in my left hand, tines down when eating by my self and with my wife. That way you can scrape and pile up any bits or sauce onto the back of the fork above the piece of meat or whatever with your knife. More efficient that way. I picked that habit up when when I was going to university in the UK. However, when eating with other "Mericans" I try to do it the way most folks around here do so as not to draw attention to myself.

Somehow I learned this was the proper way to eat and I've always done it this way. My parents didn't even teach me how to brush my teeth so I didn't get it from them.

I think it comes naturally, from having a dominant hand. It’s a behavior that you have to unlearn.

Tines down - even my 9yo knows that. If you need a shovel, get a spoon.

Kind of like misusing the fingers to indicate a count of beers in that tarantino movie, wasn't some critical scene in another WW2 movie brought about by the "clinking" of Americans moving their eating tools around (as no European would) and showing them to be outsiders?

So how do you hold a fork?
 

This thread is funny!!

Especially because my nephew holds his fork with a closed fist. Every time we have a family gathering, he looks like he guards his plate as if he is in prison and going to shank the first poor sap that walks to close as he uses his other arm to wrap around the plate like he is protecting everything on his plate.

Yeah, I give him chit about it. I like to ask him how long he has been out of the joint.


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Upon further reflection, I must "knife in right fork in left tines down". I can't really think of any other good way to do it (assuming you need a knife and the fork isn't adequate to cut with). I have no idea what I do after that.

See, I was taught to not use a spoon/shovel, but to use a fork for everything (which I always thought that was weird).

I dunno, as a child I switch hit. Cutting meat/fish/poultry, tines down in the left hand, knife in the right. All other foods, fork in right hand, tines up. As an adult, I solved it. Chopsticks for almost everything including chicken wings.

Hm.

I'll settle this. This example is right-handed: The way you hold a fork is with the waist of the fork resting on the outermost knuckle of the middle finger of your right hand. With the tines facing UP. A bit like a chopstick. For cutting meat, you transfer the fork to your left hand and, with the fork tine facing downward, hold the meat while you cut it with the knife. Then you place the knife across the outer edge of the plate, furthest from you, with the blade facing you. All knife blades ALWAYS face the center of the plate, whether they have been used yet or not.

Then you transfer the fork back to your right hand and, holding it as I described, you pick up the food and place it into your mouth. With every bite that needs to be cut, this is the procedure. You do not make multiple cuts so that you can save time. You cut one bite and you eat one bite.

My wife's family is Norwegian and from the northern midwest. They largely keep the fork in their left hand, tines facing downward, and the tines are in their left hands when they place the food into their mouths, with the tines still facing downward. This seems a little barbarian to me but it works, and I do it sometimes.

Elbows never touch the table. I learned this lesson by getting my elbow poked my my father, with his fork.

Food is passed from left to right. When all the food has travelled back to its start position at the table, then people can start eating.

There is a special butter knife on the butter plate. You take whatever amount of butter you think you would like, and place it on your plate. The knife that started on the napkin next to your plate is never used to get butter from the butter plate.

Forks are lined up on the left side of your plate when you sit down. Knives and spoons are arranged on the right side. knives are closer to your plate than spoons. In this way, conveniently, when you begin the meal your fork is in your left hand and your knife is in your right hand. Where they belong for cutting. Spoons are conveniently placed on your right.

When you ask for a second helping of something, the person to the right of that serving bowl picks it up and passes it to the right where it eventually gets to you. You don't "fly" food over a table as if it were moved using a crane.

Now....don't get me wrong. I am not a prude. I usually see violations of these rules, almost always actually, and for the most part they do not bother me. But these are the rules of proper dinner mechanics as I learned them. Some folks were raised by wolves, not that there's anything wrong with that. ;)

Tines down: fork in left hand and knife in right. I never switch - that has never made any sense to me. I use the knife to push food onto the fork. I guess I have a similar opinion of using a spoon to shovel food into my mouth.

I try to savor the moment of eating food.

They must not eat peas.

It's a dead give away that one is American. It leads to the other tell, Americans will cut up a bunch of pieces or even all their food then switch hands to eat so they don't have to do it for each bite.

As a proud American I will continue to hold my fork with the tines curved up.... all you unpatriotic heathens can just fork off ;)....

I keed .... but I started this thread outta curiosity .... and it's impossible to eat BBQ slaw with the tines curved downward :D.