Who needs cutlery anyway? Why food is more delicious when you eat with your hands

When I first introduced my now-husband to my family, he was met with open arms by everyone – except my nine-year-old niece. “Why does Aunty have to marry that man?” she asked, before scathingly adding: “I bet he can’t even eat with his hands.”

In fact, my British Jewish fiance was adept at eating with his hands, but my niece’s assumption that he couldn’t maintain this most basic of Bangladeshi cultural practices was apparently reason enough for her to withhold approval. If he couldn’t even manage that, how was he going to be good enough to marry her beloved aunt? At our first family meal together, she eyed him curiously as he ignored the knife and fork laid out for him – the sole cutlery on the table – and studiously mixed the steaming rice and yellow dal with his fingers. My father put a piece of fried fish on his future son-in-law’s plate, a carefully selected piece taken from the belly – or pethi – and usually reserved for children because it contains fewer bones. My mother reassured him that he could use a fork if he preferred, but boldly he persisted.

I watched with apprehension, mixed with pride, as my husband-to-be carefully probed the fish, pressing for treacherous bones with his thumb and forefinger, as I had shown him how to. He ate slowly and deliberately, maintaining the correct conventions of hand eating, touching the food only with the right hand. My parents were impressed – and reassured – that their new son-in-law was able to maintain this cultural practice. After our wedding, we were invited to dine at the homes of my many aunties and uncles across the country, as is the custom for newlyweds. At each dinner, my husband impressed his hosts (who all, without fail, had thoughtfully laid out cutlery for him to use) by expertly eating with his hands.

In the west, what was once considered taboo or ill-mannered has now become run of the mill: “finger food” exists as an entire category of culinary delights, and it is considered normal to eat certain foods with hands. Nobody would look twice at someone eating a burger with their hands in a restaurant, and eating a pizza with a knife and fork may even be considered a faux pas. But there remains a clear line; nobody is eating chicken tikka masala and pilau rice with their hands in their local curry house (save for in a few cherished eateries in parts of east London, where special sinks are installed for the Bangladeshi diners who want to wash before and after partaking in their plates of aromatic kacchi biryani). But for a time, eating with hands was seen as both somehow subversive and exciting. Sylvia Plath, in The Bell Jar, described the liberation of using one’s fingers to eat salad at the table: “I’d discovered, after a lot of extreme apprehension about what spoons to use, that if you do something incorrect at table with a certain arrogance … nobody will think you are bad-mannered or poorly brought up. They will think you are original and very witty.”

It is hardly surprising that the fascination about the “correct” way to eat goes the other way too. My grandfather, who owned an Indian-Bangladeshi restaurant in Manchester in the 1970s, referred to knives and forks as sifkhata – which literally translates to “chip cutter” – and was adamant that his children and grandchildren learned to use them properly, so we wouldn’t be flummoxed by the various rules of which hand to hold a fork in, or what a fish knife looked like.

When I started at Oxford University, almost a decade after my grandfather had passed away, I was grateful again for his insistence, as I confidently navigated the cutlery laid out on those grand tables at formal hall. But just as there is an etiquette to using knives and forks (best simplified as: start on the outside and work your way in), eating with hands is no free-for-all. It is widely practised around the world, with cultures across the Middle East, Africa and Asia eating with their hands as a matter of course – but what is surprisingly common is the etiquette rules surrounding it.

First, is the importance of hand-washing before eating. Guests are shown the utmost hospitality with a jug and basin being brought to the table, and the host pouring water over the guests’ hands. As a child, I couldn’t understand why, in my grandparents’ house in Manchester, which had a kitchen and running water, guests were still brought a basin and a jug to wash their hands at the table. I now recognise the ritual of this practice: that while guests certainly can (and often do) wash their hands under the tap, the use of a jug and basin is a nod to how it used to be – and the status afforded to guests in such cultures. This practice is all well and good when washing at the start of the meal, but my stomach used to turn – and still does – when a basin and jug is presented to diners to wash when they have finished eating, and the hand-washing water is visibly swishing around the bowl, turmeric-stained, with stray bits of rice floating around. In my opinion, if there’s a sink and a tap, then the correct etiquette is to use them rather than a bowl at the end of the meal, if for no reason other than to preserve the delicate sensibilities of the poor person who has to carry the washing water back to the kitchen without sloshing it on themselves.

The second universal rule is that the food is only touched with the right hand. This is common regardless of faith or food – whether the national staple is bread, rice or some other grain such as millet or maize, or mashed cassava or plantain. Touching food with the left hand is a major taboo in most countries, seemingly absent only in Europe and North America.

Being familiar with these conventions regarding eating with hands has helped me culturally adapt when I have lived in different places: in Zimbabwe, I quickly learned to shape the doughy maize-meal – sadza – with my fingers, and use it to wrap around leafy, stewed greens. In Ethiopia, I was well prepared for eating injera with shiro, tearing rough squares of the teff-flour pancake with my right hand and scooping up the berbere-scented chickpea stew. The Ethiopian practice of gursha – feeding friends and family by hand – was also familiar to me, as something we do affectionately in Bangladeshi tradition too. It exemplifies the cultural significance of sharing and intimacy built through the direct act of feeding.

Cultural norms and taboos do not exist in a vacuum – they are often rooted in a wider belief system, whether notions of sharing v individualism, or even ideas around health and wellbeing. Using hands to eat means that there is no material limit to the number of people who can partake in a meal. In the Middle East, especially, but also parts of Asia and Africa, food is also often served in a communal dish – known as a gebeta in Ethiopia, and a taal in Bengal – meaning that it is impossible to run out of plates, and there is no need to scrabble around for an extra fork if someone unexpectedly shows up at dinner time, reflecting the importance of communality in experiencing food. With regards to philosophies regarding health, the Indian practice of ayurveda teaches the benefits of eating with hands, based on the belief that each of the five fingers on a hand corresponds to a different element (ether, air, fire, water and earth) and that eating with the hand connects us more directly with our food, and even boosts digestion.

There is, of course, the perennial debate about whether food really tastes better when eaten with our hands: something so subjective can only be experienced personally, but there must be a reason why fish and chips eaten on a windy beach with fingers tastes infinitely better than when served on a warmed white china plate on a restaurant table. The salt and vinegar sticks to our fingertips – we lick off the tangy crystals that cling to our skin in a way that would be impossible with a fork. To me, it is a non-question: I enjoy my food best when I can eat with my hands. Whether that is a beef-filled taco, topped with pico de gallo and sour cream, or a steaming hot plate of fried rice and dim biran – omelette with green chillies, coriander and onion – the act of mixing, methodically, rhythmically, and then eating, is meditative – almost an act of devotion in itself.

Related: Food, faith and family: how we feed our son his rich mixed heritage

In Bangla we call it makhani – mixing. It is a sign of love shown by parents towards their children. I find myself doing it for my son when I feed him, pressing the grains of rice and chicken with my fingertips, shaping it into small mounds that he can pop into his mouth. I remember my father doing the same for me, carefully sifting out any bones from fish and offering me mouthfuls of lovingly prepared rice. I have a cousin, a medical student in her 20s, who still asks her dad to makhai the rice for her when she goes home to visit. He always obliges, knowing that this is how we retain our familial bonds. Happily, my niece shares this sentiment, and duly welcomed my husband into the fold after seeing him do battle with a whole fried fish with his hand (and win). If he could do this for her aunty, then maybe he was alright after all.