List of eating utensils

A variety of eating utensils have been used by people to aid eating when dining. Most societies traditionally use bowls or dishes to contain food to be eaten, but while some use their hands to deliver this food to their mouths, others have developed specific tools for the purpose. In Western cultures, cutlery items such as knives and forks are the traditional norm, while in much of the East, chopsticks are more common. Spoons are ubiquitous.

History

In some cultures, such as Ethiopian and Indian, hands alone are used or bread takes the place of eating utensils. In others, such as Japanese and Chinese, where bowls of food are more often raised to the mouth, little modification from the basic pair of chopsticks and a spoon has taken place. Western culture has taken the development and specialization of eating utensils further, with the result that multiple utensils may appear in a dining setting, each with a different name and purpose. With the evolution of people's eating habits, further modification continues to take place, mostly in the West.

List of utensil types

Spoon / Tablespoon – List of types of spoons

Fork – Western/Southeast Asian utensils

Knife

Chopsticks – East and Southeast Asian utensil

Skewer

Tongs

Toothpick / Cocktail stick

Drinking straw

Food pusher - a utensil with a blade set at 90° to the handle, used for pushing food onto a spoon or fork

Utensils for specific foods

Some utensils are designed for eating or preparing specific foods:

Butter knife

Cake fork

Soup spoon

Crab cracker

Crab fork

Fish knife

Fondue fork

Grapefruit knife

Grapefruit spoon

Lobster pick

Snail tongs and forks

Nutcracker

Ice cream scoop

Steak knife

Tongs for:

Sugar (Sugar tongs)

Asparagus

Honey dipper

Meat claws (used to shred barbecue meats such as brisket)

Combination utensils

Over time, traditional utensils have been modified in various ways in attempts to make eating more convenient or to reduce the total number of utensils required. These are typically called combination utensils.