Is rice supposed to be eaten with chopsticks?
This question is about cultural norms and tradition. In Asian countries, is rice intended to be eaten with chopsticks? I heard this is a western misconception, as rice is too hard to pickup with chop sticks (though in my opinion if it's sticky rice it's manageable). Is rice supposed to be eaten with a spoon in Chinese cuisines? I'm not expert, but I noticed Chinese cuisines normally have more loose rice, compared to Japanese cuisines where the rice is often wrapped in seaweed.
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In Southeast Asia, rice is not eaten with chopsticks. A fork and spoon is used for jasmine rice, and hands are used for sticky rice.
Chopsticks are only used in these countries for noodle dishes, and not always even then.
Depends on the rice. Don't eat long-grain (e.g. basmati) or wild rices with chopsticks - it will be a waste of your time.
The norm is chopsticks. A couple of factors. As mentioned by others, if the rice is a stickier variety, it's easier to grab the clumps.
The bigger variety is how you use it. Observe some Asians eating rice. Usually the bowl is lifted to the mouth, and the chopsticks are used to push/shovel the rice, not pick it up.
The Chinese cultural norm is to eat rice with chopsticks. It would be very inconvenient to constantly switch back and forth between eating with chopsticks and a spoon depending upon whether you were eating rice or vegetables or meat.
To get around the loose grain problem, you can use the shovel method. You pick up your bowl and use a shoveling motion with your chopsticks to eat.
This video illustrates the shovel method as well as picking up clumps of rice.
In Japanese food, I would say you use chopsticks to eat white rice that comes in a rice bowl. Japanese rice is short/medium grained and sticks together so you can pick up clumps at a time. You also learn to pick up single grains, so as not to leave a single grain in the bowl at the end of the meal. This is good manners.
Someone mentioned the shovel method, which is also acceptable when eating rice in liquid, like ocha-zuke (rice in tea) or tamago-gohan (raw egg rice). Regarding eating a plain bowl rice, men, children and hungry people are often portrayed eating with the shovel method, but this isn't considered particularly fantastic manners outside of home, and especially not very ladylike for women ;)
There are exceptions, like when you eat curry and rice, or stir fried rice - generally rice that comes on a plate (and is therefore an introduced food) - you would a spoon, not chopsticks.
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