Now that's using your noodle

March 13, 2020 4:34 PM

CBC's Garrett Barry sits down with Dean Prince, the master of spaghetti scissors.
posted by mandolin conspiracy (38 comments total)

went viral for using a pair of scissors to snip his spaghetti

I feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of Italians cried out in affront, and were suddenly outraged.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:50 PM on March 13, 2020 [4 favorites]

Do you eat to work or work to eat? If the former, sure, shove it in yr pie hole and get back to work. If the later, then savor the experience and appreciate the work that went into it.

I get that there are privilege issues here but I also get that the media hardly ever front-pages them.
posted by sjswitzer at 5:03 PM on March 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

The chinese noodle place we occasionally go to has scissors available as part of the normal tableware. Granted these are handmade noodles and quite long, but it's not a terribly wacky thing.
posted by tavella at 5:07 PM on March 13, 2020 [5 favorites]

I dunno. I mean, if you have to resort to scissors to cut your noodles, maybe you need to cook them juuuuuuust a bit longer.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:48 PM on March 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

Wait till they hear about pizza scissors...
posted by kaibutsu at 5:52 PM on March 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

OK here's what killed me about this video. Dean clearly demonstrates proper cutting technique but Garrett just blithely ignores the master and snips the spaghetti off way too low, then is left with a flapping trail of long noodles he has to wrangle into his mouth! Dean correctly uses the scissors to cut the spaghetti close to the fork so he doesn't have that problem.

Garrett, you can't snip your spaghetti and let it hang, too. It's one or the other. You gotta commit. Commit like my man Dean.

*Note: I have never cut my noodles as I am firmly pro-spaghetti twirling for myself, but if you're going to snip you must commit.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 6:07 PM on March 13, 2020 [25 favorites]

Eating spaghetti with a white beard calls for this kind of intervention.
posted by waving at 6:08 PM on March 13, 2020 [8 favorites]

Commit like my man Dean.

He's precise and thorough. I'd heard the interview on the radio first, but it wasn't until I looked at the video that I thought: "Oh. He clearly has it going on."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:22 PM on March 13, 2020 [3 favorites]

Eating spaghetti with a white beard calls for this kind of intervention.

Have you considered the noodle splash guard from the Chindogu post?
posted by sysinfo at 6:40 PM on March 13, 2020 [9 favorites]

I misread and thought the scissors were the sole utensil, now I’m a little disappointed. Why not just cut all the noodles up on the plate in one pass with scissors? Seems a lot more efficient, and I know it’s effective bc it works like a charm for my toddler.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:53 PM on March 13, 2020 [8 favorites]

I cut up any long noodles with a knife before eating them, and yeah I know it's gauche, but I don't care. They're my noodles; I don't care what you do with your noodles -- why would you care what I do with mine?
posted by mikeand1 at 7:17 PM on March 13, 2020 [5 favorites]

Faster and more efficient: grind down the fork until you can grip it in the bit holder of a cordless screwdriver ...
posted by sebastienbailard at 7:27 PM on March 13, 2020 [3 favorites]

Low speed only though or you'll end up flinging more than you twirl, which would reduce the efficiency somewhat.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:45 PM on March 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

Scissors are a standard side utensil if you order noodles in a Korean restaurant. This is so quaint that we think someone in Canada thought of this.
posted by scruss at 7:49 PM on March 13, 2020 [7 favorites]

Alternatively...
posted by jim in austin at 7:55 PM on March 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

All other questions aside, how is this an improvement over using the utensils we already have built-in to sever long pasta strands - i.e. teeth? Honest serious question - from a (not technically white yet, but getting there) beard-haver, I might add.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:03 PM on March 13, 2020

I gotta get me some spaghetti scissors.

In answer to "why not just use teeth?"
1) Teeth don't prevent spaghetti from getting sauce on my chin or dripping on my shirt.
2) Twirling doesn't always work, and you (or I, at least) can't always tell what a reasonable biteful is before the twirl is done.
3) I have teeth problems, with a bridge replacing some teeth; biting through stuff isn't impossible but isn't always easy.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 8:24 PM on March 13, 2020 [3 favorites]

I haven’t been this viscerally upset since I found out my friend’s Swedish in-laws eat spaghetti with a knife and fork

A KNIFE AND FORK

LIKE A STEAK OR SOMETHING
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:28 PM on March 13, 2020

Wait till they hear about pizza scissors...

Are you joking? Cause I cut my pizza with scissors.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:38 PM on March 13, 2020 [5 favorites]

I have seen reference to this in novels before I think. As has been noted, this isn't a totally novel concept in the world, though I’ve never seen someone eat spaghetti that way in person. Knife and fork I’ve seen lots of times, ditto loud slurping action with minimal utensil use at all.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:41 PM on March 13, 2020

Thought this was going to be about making scissors out of dried spaghetti. Am disappoint.
posted by medusa at 8:42 PM on March 13, 2020 [3 favorites]

I thought something similar, medusa, but cooked...
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:51 PM on March 13, 2020

Alternately, with gnocchi and a compressed air cannon, he could be done with dinner in less than a minute if he put some effort into it.
posted by sebastienbailard at 9:13 PM on March 13, 2020 [8 favorites]

eating spaghetti with scissors eyes

WE HAVE SUCH SIGHTS TO SHOW YOU
posted by zamboni at 10:30 PM on March 13, 2020 [2 favorites]

I am partial to breaking my uncooked spaghetti in half, then placing in the pot to boil. No scissors needed, then.
posted by zardoz at 11:49 PM on March 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

And the gods wept because I just break the spaghetti in half before cooking it. No scissors required. The breaking is accompanied by a by-now ritualistic guilty twinge as with the snap! sound my Italian ex's face rises before my eyes, twisted with horror. There were no scissors for eating anywhere in his kitchen. It was twirl or be covered in flecks of spaghetti sauce/pesto/bits of egg and pancetta.
posted by Crystal Fox at 11:53 PM on March 13, 2020 [5 favorites]

I kinda wanta see Ned, the anti-Dean. He eats his pasta as a single ten meter long spaghet. Dean's scissors? Meet Ned's straw.
posted by bartleby at 1:39 AM on March 14, 2020 [6 favorites]

I would wind up injuring myself by sticking the scissors in my mouth
.
posted by rdr at 2:46 AM on March 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

I remember my mom cutting up my spaghetti, though not with scissors but a knife and fork (put fork into spaghetti with back of fork facing upward, insert knife through tines, apply downward pressure while pulling knife toward you, repeat one inch away as needed). This happened when I was pre-K but then I was basically left to fend for myself. If you don't let your offspring struggle and learn how to capture, kill and eat their own spaghetti when they are young you end up with this guy.
posted by waving at 4:44 AM on March 14, 2020 [5 favorites]

Am I the only one wondering how those scissors will be properly cleaned? Food will get into that hinge and be very tough to remove. Most household scissors weren’t intended to be washed repeatedly. Guy’s wife needs to switch to a different type of pasta, one that can be eaten with spoon or fork: farfalle, rotini, gemelli, etc. So many options.
posted by kinnakeet at 6:17 AM on March 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

Guy’s wife needs to switch to a different type of pasta, one that can be eaten with spoon or fork: farfalle, rotini, gemelli, etc. So many options

You definitely can't get as much noodle on fork by weight with any of those shorter pastas. The man knows what he's doing. Efficiency!
posted by rodlymight at 6:52 AM on March 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

Some people just don't like food.

Friend of mine is has mentioned that he wished Purina made "Human Chow," basically like Soylent, but dry, in a bag that keeps like dry dog food. He says he'd rather just gobble down a couple handfuls of that than have to figure out meals. Sure, a nice dinner with friends once in a while, but for most meals? Human Chow.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:19 AM on March 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

Friend of mine is has mentioned that he wished Purina made "Human Chow," basically like Soylent, but dry, in a bag that keeps like dry dog food.

Previously. (note, right under the subheading....formatted in a way that makes it easy to miss).
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:50 AM on March 14, 2020

It is funny when a grown person does this for spaghetti but yeah anyone with a kid with a love of noodles has had the experience. And I suspect it is pretty ubiquitous in most noodle eating cultures. It's a standard bit of tableware at our local phở place when you go with a kid as an example.

I wonder if he brings them along when he goes to a church spaghetti supper?
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:53 AM on March 14, 2020

I've always cut my spaghetti with the side of my fork, making a fork-sized bite for me to then scoop onto the fork for the journey into my mouth. I've never been successful with the twirling thing, ever. It never occurred to me to use scissors because I've just used the side of my fork.
posted by hippybear at 8:04 AM on March 14, 2020

Cutting in advance is different! Knife and fork means you just have a bunch of 1" bits and you might as well use a spoon. With the scissor method you have full turns on the fork, you just shorten a few stragglers. I totally would have done this when I was a kid if I had thought of it.

Team Dean.
posted by rhizome at 6:42 PM on March 14, 2020 [3 favorites]

I am partial to breaking my uncooked spaghetti in half, then placing in the pot to boil. No scissors needed, then.

I wish. My spouse objects to this approach. If I lived alone, I would definitely just break the pasta before cooking.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:29 PM on March 14, 2020

Scissors are a standard side utensil if you order noodles in a Korean restaurant. This is so quaint that we think someone in Canada thought of this.

And generally everything else in the Korean kitchen (including the pizza mentioned above). Honestly I wonder why people bother using a knife to saw cooked food apart when it can so easily just be cut with scissors.
posted by Literaryhero at 2:15 AM on March 15, 2020