How To Eat Asparagus With The Fingers

Eating should be an opportunity to enjoy good food and conversation with good friends and family, but the food itself can often make meals an etiquette minefield. Each piece of food has its own eating procedure -- often, more than one, depending on how the food is served. Asparagus can be particularly annoying because it may be doused in sauce, tossed into the main dish in chunks or placed by itself. If the asparagus is covered in sauce, part of a stir-fry dish or is otherwise impossible or too messy to pick up by hand, forks are fine. But, if it's on its own and the sauce is on the side, go ahead and use your fingers.

Step 1

Hold the asparagus spear by the tough, cut end.

Step 2

Dip the other tip of the spear into whatever sauce has been provided, if desired. The sauce should be in individual serving bowls.

Step 3

Take a bite off the dipped end of the spear and repeat dipping and eating until you finish the edible portion of the spear.

Step 4

Place the tough end back on the plate.

Tips and Warnings

Not everyone realizes there are times you may eat asparagus with your fingers. Advice on whether to mimic well-meaning but incorrect hosts who use forks, or to brandish an asparagus spear bare-handed-- even if you're the only one doing so -- is mixed. What's Cooking America strongly advises following the hosts' lead, but Judith Martin, better known as Miss Manners, advised a reader in an April 2007 "Sun Sentinel" column to use fingers anyway, reasoning that "anyone so rude as to go around reporting this supposed error will eventually get his comeuppance from someone who knows the rule."