Kitchen & Food

#14 · Spin spaghetti like a pro

Wrap spaghetti around a chopstick and bring it to your mouth like you're in a very fancy Italian restaurant. No fork? No problem.

Anyone who has watched someone eat spaghetti properly knows there is more to it than a fork and hope. Holding a chopstick against the fork gives you the flat resisting surface the technique actually needs.

How to do it

1. Take a small amount of spaghetti onto the fork - far less than instinct suggests. Three or four strands.
2. Hold a chopstick horizontally in the other hand and press the fork tines against it.
3. Rotate the fork against the chopstick so the pasta wraps around the tines.
4. Lift and eat, with nothing trailing.

Why it works

Twirling only works if the tines have something to push against, otherwise the fork spins and the pasta stays put. In Italy the resisting surface is the curve of the bowl. The chopstick just puts that surface wherever you want it.

Tips & warnings

• Small forkfuls. Almost every failure here is loading too much pasta.
• Long pasta only - spaghetti, linguine, bucatini. There is nothing to twirl on a penne.
• A spoon is the more common substitute, and in Italy is considered a children's tool. The chopstick is at least an unfamiliar transgression rather than a famous one.