Cooking Chopsticks

Thoughts on cooking chopsticks? They're way longer than normal chopsticks, and are supposedly very good for cooking lots of different meals, not just asian ones.

I've got a pair, but apart from deep fried stuff that spits really badly, I just use regular chopsticks for everything. Last time I used them was to reach a piece of food that fell down behind the cooker.

Sure why not

While on the subject, does anyone have any recommendations for a specific brand of chopsticks they like? regular or cooking as well.

In Asia you just find really long and a bit thicker bamboo chopsticks in every kitchen from an old Granny's to a pro kitchens.

They're pretty generic things.

At that point they're really just sticks, aren't they?

at what point aren't they just sticks

A little bit longer and they become staves. A bit thicker and they become batons.
Too short and they become splints.

I make my own. Being a woodworker has its upsides.

how do you go about it? i have a lathe, but it's too big to handle something as small as a chopstick. Do you whittle it and just give it a really good sanding and finish?

I mean, that's what they were originally used for anyway

Belt sander with 80 grit and patience. Start with 1/4" square stock and sand away. Square profile chopsticks are the easiest, obviously; you just put a taper on it. After you shape it, you hit it with 100 or 150 grit, then 220 grit, then white mineral oil.

They make the perfect omelettes

Just go with any bamboo chopsticks.

They're useful, but not exactly some esoteric mystic secret from the far-flung East.

Machinist here. A few weeks ago me and the other two made darts about the size of chopsticks out of wood from crates/pallets with our metal working tooling and emory cloth. The welder made fins out of this wall tubing and old stick boxes. I think you should be able to make chopsticks on a wood lathe too.

Of course our lathes will turn a lot faster so that makes shaping wood with paper a lot quicker.

How much training does one require to make a stick?

Not much. I'm self-taught for the most part. They don't use much material so if you screw up it's not a big deal. Just use scrap wood to practice, as long as it's not treated or something.

What's the advantage over tongs?

using your fingers when frying is much easier

To anyone reading this, do not make chopsticks out of pallets. I don't care what Pinterest said.

>the cooker
>the
>the cooker
i can't wrap my head around this

what cooker? what's a cooker? where does one keep a cooker? what prevents a person from getting to the back of a cooker? the more i say the word the less sense it makes

That authentic asian feel.

You can prick things with it, I guess

precision

i mean, technically, you could have tongs with ends as fine as chopsticks, but then again you couldn't just use one for...well i cant really thing of anything a single chopstick can do that you cant just use one part of the tongs for

you could even use one stick of the tongs to stick down your urethra, really no advantage. the only reason i mention such is because i was thinking "what can one chopstick do that a connected pair couldn't...? stick down your dick? nah you can do that with the other ones..."

What have pallets done wrong?

They are treated wood.

There are non-treated pallets out there and a standardized system of identification for exactly which treatment a given pallet has had.

Even Pinterest moms will point this out.

hahaha, my peenus weanus of course :)

hahah, it is of course, my weeeeenus peanus!

my peanus weanus, hahah :)

You have a tiny bit more control over them, because you're just aiming the top one around independently rather than opening and closing a hinge. Makes it easier to do stuff like open them wide to support a large piece of fish as you flip it over or to poke in between two things that are stuck together and lever them apart. It seems a bit easier to feel the firmness of stuff to check if it's done too, but like I say, it's a tiny difference.

seem significantly worse than using modern equipment