Correct Way To Eat Macaroni

[Khandro]

I love pasta and every type is a different experience, but how should one eat macaroni? it is the most unmanageable of all pastas. I cooked some today 'al dente' and had difficulty even getting it onto the plates, getting two stands on the floor in the process! It's too thick to wrap around your fork like spaghetti, and if you manage to get it into your mouth you cant suck it in easily because of the hole through the centre. If you cut it into small lengths it will not remain on your fork. What would Montalbano do?

[boxtops]

My macaroni is in small lengths anyway - usually about an inch long? I confess to stabbing a fork into the hole to lift it (you can get four on a fork).... I wouldn't do it in public, LOL

[sherrardk]

The macaroni I buy is really little, do you mean macaroni?

[Khandro]

No, mine comes in long lengths like spaghetti.

[Hypognosis]

Googled a bit... found this

http://www.fortwayne.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/FW/20130315/LIVING/320132732/1013

It's about spaghetti but applicable to all long pasta (or so it says)

Some interesting viewpoints expressed there that I'd not heard before, like how Italians regard the fork+spoon method and 'not cutting the pasta in polite company'.

All of a sudden I am struck with the idea that this is yet another one of those social devices used to separate the 'in group' from the 'out group'. It takes years of practice to manipulate the pasta without covering your clothes in sauce and Italians get to do this in the privacy of the family home. Not so long ago, the tourists would have had their earliest, clumsiest efforts in the restaurant setting - much to the amusement of the serving staff, no doubt.

Long macaroni does appear to be on sale in UK but I guess it's still a 'niche' product and not many have tried it.

We're used to macaroni cheese made from the 1" pieces and a bechamel sauce thick enough to make the pasta pieces stick to each other. You can thus impale the tubes through the side and rasie them to your mouth without any of the sauce inside the tubes draining out.

It was only a year or two back that I learned it is an American recipe, not a 'British classic'.

[cupotee]

I love Macaroni but only as a milk pudding...delicious. If I had come cooked right now I would eat it. Made me feel hungry now.

[Khandro]

Hypognosis; Thank you, it shows the subject worthy of research; eating long macaroni in company is not for the faint-hearted. I didn't realise it was a 'niche' product, the pre-chopped version is I see the most popular and is used to make macaroni cheese, in this form the glutinous matrix allows it to be transferred to the mouth without loss of dignity.
My main problem was attempting to eat it with a Bolognaise type sauce, the olive oil in which made for a very slippery plate-full.
I agree with the lady, eating any pasta utilising a spoon would be beyond the pale.

[brionon]

You think there is a CORRECT way to eat ?

[grasscarp]

My husband is Italian. Never noticed him struggling to eat anything, and often uses a spoon. (as mentioned by Hypognosis)

[rockyracoon]

I've just seen this long macaroni in the world food section of Tesco, it's got a picture of what looks like a baked pasta on the front so I guess it'll be easier to eat that way, at least you'd be able to slice it with a knife and fork

[rockyracoon]

Greek Pastichio is what it was I think.

[mccfluff]

i never knew there was long macaroni, imagine the mac n cheese with that........ (my eyes are so big right now)

but the little macaroni's i usally have, i like to hook on my fork, it amuses me (small things people small things)

[Khandro]

grasscarp; As part of my new research :-) ; please ask your husband if he would eat pasta with a spoon in company, and even more, would he do so in Italy?

brionon; Most certainly; every society and every culture has its 'table manners' - except perhaps now a large part of the UK, where many don't even sit at a table anymore.

[grasscarp]

Will ask him tonight Khandro when I go home.

[grasscarp]

He says that he eats spaghetti with spoon and fork (uses spoon as the anchor for twisting it on to the fork). Smaller pasta that wont easily be forked uses spoon. He says this happens everywhere.

[Khandro]

Thank you for your indulgence, does 'everywhere' include restaurants please?

[Eve]

Wow, I never knew there was long macaroni either! Mine is usually smothered in cheese sauce (mmm.....) so sticks to your cutlery too :)

That from the girl who cuts spaghetti up before it goes on my plate...

I would have thought it was perfectly acceptable to use a spoon for long pasta is eating out somewhere respectable as long as you are delicately winding less than a mouthful and not wrapping loads round so it ends up stringing down etc...

[grasscarp]

Yes it does. So I asked if it even includes posh restaurants and he said yes. I have watched him now for 39 years and we have eaten all over the world, and loads of times in Italy.

[Khandro]

^ Thank you, as the lady in Hypognosis' link above says it is commonplace in the USA, though I can't recall any time seeing it done in Italy.

[Khandro]

Then there is this; http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTopic-g187768-i20-k2437811-How_do_Italians_eat_Spaghetti_Spoon_or_no_spoon-Italy.html

[grasscarp]

Reading your latter link this is what I said
"just to clear up any confusion,when I say they used a spoon , I meant in addition to a fork. The spoon was used as a surface on which to "twirl" the spaghetti."
Spaghetti with fork, helped by a spoon below.
Where pasta not "forkable" just spoon.