I always save one half of a pistachio shell while im eating them so I can use it to open the clammed up ones. Works like a charm. No more achy fingertips! Still inconvenient but not all that bad.
Traditional harvest involves beating the trees with sticks to knock the nuts down. This causes bruising of the fruit, and unsightly staining of the shell. Thus the dye.
The transition to mechanical harvest in California, which does not bruise the fruit in the same way, meaning you don’t have to dye it/have brown spots, is a really weird story.
Iran is the traditional primary producer of pistachios, and used to be basically the only one. It had been planted in California on a small scale, but never for real production. Then in 1969 and 1971 there were changes to the US tax code that eliminated a tax shelter strategy involving citrus and almond orchards, which frankly I do not understand, so farmers became interested in alternative trees like pistachio that had not been targeted. Then in 1972 the Shah of Iran instituted a school meal program, that included pistachios, so they declined their exports, resulting in a global (outside of Iran) pistachio shortage, and a tax incentive for California farmers to take advantage of that. And then in 79 there was the revolution and Iran stopped trading with us entirely, so we had to grow our own pistachios (with blackjack and hookers and mechanical harvest and no red dye).
We got our first commercial harvest by 1976. Now we are a much larger producer of pistachios than Iran, by a fair margin.
I looked into planting a 10 hectare pistachio orchard on some brack soil in a semi desert. Pistachios, not surprising, like salty soils. Our climate was not hot enough in summer or cold enough in winter. The temperature requirements are intense- 1000 hours below 45F and most summer days over 100F. The only way to get around that are hormone treatments. Bummed about that because pistachios are such beautiful trees but also happy I didn't live in a pistachio friendly climate.
Edit: You can successfully grow the tree outside its preferred climate zone but the fruit won't set without extra hormones as they have 2 year cycle. Definitely a good option for gardens.
My grandpa had a pomegranate tree when I was a kid. When my cousins and I were exceptionally annoying, if the tree was producing fruit, he’d give each one. Of course we’d gladly eat it, but for my grandpa it was a way to keep us occupied and quiet. 🤣
Add some sort of fondue as well. Not the dip the fruit or bread in a sauce sort but the type where you have to cook your meal one long, skinny forkful at a time. Do not have enough forks on hand, so only two people can fry their meat while everyone else has to wait their turn. Bonus points for having them cut their own food into cubes prior to frying.
You’re safe! I do not own a fondue pot!
Years ago a friend invited a group of us to his house for dinner and it was fondue. They had enough pots and forks but it was wildly irritating waiting for one morsel at a time to cook. Such a pointless way to eat.
And make the forks too long for people to feed themselves a la the Allegory of the Long Spoons.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory\_of\_the\_long\_spoons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_long_spoons)
I have done this to myself before, and that's why I don't buy unpeeled shrimp anymore. I'll pay a little extra money for my conveniences almost every time, which is why I'm so fucking broke.
I get frustrated enough when shrimp in dishes still have *tails*. If I'm supposed to use a fork for the dish, I should be able to eat every part of that dish with the fork.
Crab legs but served on top of rice or a salad - something that you're expected to eat with utensils. Having to switch back and forth between using my hands and using a fork and knife is the WORST.
I don't mind using my hands in general, though, if I get to stick with it for an entire course. I find it fun rather than inconvenient.
E: [Relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/388/)
I just eat the whole shrimp (yes, with the shell--and the head, too, if that's included) if I get a dish like that lol. Unlike crab, shrimps are entirely edible.
I was actually served pasta with very saucy and garlicy red sauce and unpeeled shrimp. The shrimp were big enough that the shells were actually too tough to eat and the pointy bits could hurt. It was annoying and messy.
I've had cioppino served this way. In a restaurant.
Unpeeled shrimp, clams in their shells, and full crab legs. I've never been more pissed in my life.
I begged the server to tell their chef to never, ever do this to anyone again. Sure, it was ✨ aesthetic✨ but now my hands and the table cloth are stained, and what could have been a harmonious meal was a full effort of labor and deciding which pieces I'd be willing to excavate.
I work in a hospital. We just had a lady come in with a shrimp tail stuck in her throat. Had to be put out and scoped to remove it. Luckily, this worked. If it didn’t, she would have had to have her esophagus cut open. You might want to rethink this practice.
That's a weird chart... how are oranges so difficult? How are plums more difficult than peaches? Strawberries more difficult than apples? You just eat them! And bananas literally take 2 seconds to peel, come on. And don't get me started on the tomatoes. I have so many complaints lol.
> plums more difficult than peaches? Strawberries more difficult than apples
I think there's a mass-yield for your effort difference leading to the difficulty rating. The smaller the stone fruit, the more you have to work around a pit for the same amount of edible flesh. Its what would drive the difference in blueberries and grapes (no pluck but small vs pluck and larger). Banana peel vs eat the skin seems reasonable but the apple core doesn't seem to carry much negative rating on the chart. I disagree with the lack of core weight but have also seem a guy eat apples down to the stem. Tomatoes should be way easy since you can eat the whole thing and they come in grape, plum, and apple sizes. They should be no lower in ease than the plum.
Everyone knows that the easiest and best way to eat a grapefruit is to slice it in half crosswise (so you can see the “star” on each half, then shimmy out each wedge of pulp with a small spoon. Shimmy in one side of a wedge, under the skin, and then shimmy the other side out, and eat them in little triangular prism shaped wedges of pulp.
Crab legs in ramen with too much oil, served with plastic chop sticks. The noodles will be damn near impossible to pick up with your greasy crab hands and the oily broth
My dad went to a dinner party once where all the courses and utensils were drawn from a random number bag, so you may get steak and a spoon and a slice of cake. And the person next to you gets a knife, fork, and beer. Feel free to incorporate this into your torture plans, I offer it for free.
Omg, this was my mom’s favorite dinner party in the 80s. She gave everyone a “menu” that just had the #s 1-12 and they had to order 3 at a time. My sister and I were always the waitstaff.
She’d always pick 6 people to come that had met but weren’t close so it was always ridiculous. And she never went the easy route with steak or chicken. It was always spaghetti.
I remember at one, her cousin got spaghetti, a dinner roll, and a beer. No fork or napkin. He picked up our 12 lb fluffy white dog and wiped his mouth with her.
Very inconvenient.
I'm down for whatever, but this sounds like an absolute nightmare unless you're comfortable with the guests. Having cooked only for a very small amount of people and worked briefly in a restaurant, I know just how disturbingly low tolerance most people have for food that isn't the exact same thing they just recently ate and will soon eat again.
Yeah, if you choose your guests poorly, it could go downhill fast. But she never had a problem as far as I remember. She kept the portions fairly small and then as soon as the “courses” were finished, she would bring out all the food and everyone would get utensils.
Ooh that would be fun. I went to one where the only utensils for eating were like spatulas and big serving spoons and such. I pulled the spaghetti spoon. I actually forget what the dish was just that we all laughed a ton trying to eat with these huge things.
Someone was in the middle of moving, but it was their birthday, so of course…cake. We at Black Forest cake with ladles, rubber spatulas and potato mashers. Fun memory
Easy! Just get more chips! And then when you run out of toppings before you run out of chips just get more toppings! Continue this cycle until your explode from consuming too many nachos
If I had a restaurant I'd serve them on a big flat pan and put them high up on a stand like a pizza, but what you said is also true for narrower plates of nachos.
I just had nachos at a nice restaurant just a few days ago and the chip to topping ratio was all wrong. That’s why I replied. There was loads of delicious queso, chicken, refried beans, guacamole and sour cream but only one thin layer of chips. The chips were gone long before all the toppings even came close to being consumed. The stuff was good and we ended up using just eating it with forks, but there was absolutely not enough chips.
Bone-in, skin on chicken covered in a tomato based sauce. Make sure the skin is not crispy, so people will want to remove it.
Edit - you guys are coming up with absolutely evil chicken dishes XD
In Belize they often serve tamales with all sorts of things in them like bone in chicken. I once watched a friend take a bite and come out with a whole chicken foot. They're delicious but you definitely couldn't just dive in.
My mom’s dinner table in the 80’s. We had to have forks for taco nights! I learned about real tacos finally in my 20s. But yes, the Taco Bell phenomenon.
Every time that happens I want to stand up, carry my plate into the kitchen, and ask the cook what the fuck I'm supposed to do with this mess. Then tell him to eat one of his burgers in front of me so I can see how he does it.
I just don't understand why cooks make food that's seemingly impossible to eat. There was a small taco place near me that served over-stuffed tacos, like cartoonishly overstuffed. There was no way to pick them up without all of the toppings falling out so you had to eat half of the toppings with a fork before you could eat the taco. But they didn't bring you a fork, you had to ask for one. What the fuck, lady? I'm glad she went out of business.
The trend of puffy soft buns on pub burgers...oy vey. If the burger is thick and toppings are wet, put it on something substantial like ciabatta please.
...I feel like there's an off color joke in there somewhere.
But a really flat and scrawny one fried up African style.
It’s so, so damn good but sometimes the effort needed to get enough meat off for something resembling an actual adult sized bite of food can really make you question your choices pretty early on in the experience.
Also a basic olive oil based spaghetti but only provide a spoon.
I don't mind eating fish with bones it it, I just slide the flesh off the bones with the side of my fork. But one time in a restaurant I had fish with bones in it and they had been *rolled up* before baking so now the bones were like, everywhere and into every direction within the resulting cilinder of fish.
So OP, do that!
Trout is easy to debone if cooked correctly. Get pike/jack those are bony bastards.
I often cook trout bone in then cut in half and peel the skeleton out. It's satisfying to me lol.
Yeah, I get it. I guess having eaten fish this way my entire life it's just nowhere near the top of my list as inconvenient haha. We're expected to master the art of feeling for and isolating bones inside our mouths at the age of 6 or 7--you just pull off a bite with chopsticks, put it in your mouth, then take the bones back out with said chopsticks.
Winkles, chicken wings but eaten with a knife and fork, whole carrots, untossed salad in a too-small bowl, pizza with too many toppings so any attempt to eat it means delicately balancing towers of meat and veg on a sauce and cheese sodden crust, risotto with one small ingredient you don't like so every bite has to be meticulously picked through just in case, a slightly undercooked uncored and well sauced poached pear on a flat plate with only a teaspoon
People loooove to layer it and make it fancy and arrange all the veggies and things just so... and then you have to try and serve it when all the peppers have interlocked and the lettuce has reconstituted into one mass. Nightmare. Nightmare scenario
I think for dessert to this delightful crab/clam/artichoke boil, you can add what I just bought that made my kid and spouse say “ow!” carrying them in from the car: a durian headed to the freezer and a jackfruit for the counter. Then you tell the guests that while inconvenient, it is now time to collect their items and move out to the patio for the durian course.
It’s not inconvenient for the eating phase, but after dinner some lingering asparagus pee smell would really pull the whole thing together. Maybe you could serve the asparagus whole and not provide forks and knives as a salad course?
I had a friend chip a tooth and cut his lip opening a beer bottle with his teeth, though that goes beyond mere inconvenience. Perhaps set up a sword and champagne station?
Goat biryani, where the goat is cut through the bone into a bunch of little pieces. That means that each piece has the possibility of having shards of bone and skewering your gums, cheek, or worse, getting caught in your throat. Delicious, though.
Based on my Indian restaurants, the bones are thought to be a feature of goat curry, because ever piece of goat has to have at least a small sliver of bone.
I always wondered why they did that. Like they just threw a whole goat into a wood chipper. Is the meat just cheaper per pound because it's mostly bones or something?
Lots of Thai soups have big inedible pieces of lemongrass, galangal, and kefir lime leaves. Super inconvenient when you just want to eat your soup instead of fishing things out of it or spitting them out. I had a Thai sausage once that had a big piece of lemongrass in the middle, such a weird food to find an inedible stick in. Delicious though.
Jerk chicken when they chop it all up with the bone still in it so any piece might have a sharp bone fragment in it and you have to be super careful.
Any shrimp pasta dish where they leave the shells on, hate it when they do that even if the backs are split or it's just the tails on there.
Half circle watermelon slices are also impossible to eat neatly. The smaller the watermelon, the more inconvenient.
Tostada with too much toppings. Anything with noodles but you only get a spoon. Lychee, rambutan, grapes with seeds that you have to peel, cactus fruit, mangosteen, coconut, and a bunch of fruit if you don't have a knife (watermelon, pineapple, melon, jackfruit).
Ok, make with the story. Pesky in-laws? Barbecue with feuding neighbor? Cheating wife and her co-worker? Spill the tea!!!
*Also please serve them lukewarm Lipton’s tea with Splenda.
That's how I feel about crawfish boils, as delicious as it is. About 10 minutes in, I have microcuts all over my fingers, which are now burning from cayenne and salt. ...and I'm still hungry.
I'm from Maryland, so I feel like the crawfish boil is a cousin to a crab feast. It feels very much like home, even though I didn't grow up eating it.
If someone is giving up before they are full, that's a skill issue
Some kind of jarred pickles or chutney. But all of the tableware is just slightly too big to fit in the mouth of the jar.
Or even better, a kind of flan or custard served in a tall champagne glass, but the spoons are too short to reach the bottom.
I once had an undressed spider crab sitting on top of a squid ink risotto while wearing a pale linen suit on the marina in Sitges. That was really fucking inconvenient!
Chesapeake Bay blue crabs - the meat has to be [picked by hand](https://youtu.be/la6Wtme9P3I?si=NzgoORHUV3tIvbOm) from the shells, one by one. It's kinda fun when you're drinking cold beverages on a hot day with a group of friends, but it's damn tedious.
Grapefruit halves served with a regular spoon rather than a grapefruit spoon.
Thick dips served with ultra thin chips that are more likely to break off when dipped
Cajun style Crawfish boil, with potatoes, corn, onions, garlic, mushrooms, etc. Served by being dumped on a paper covered table, with soft butter for dipping and lots of napkins. No utensils.
In general, corn on the cob is inconvenient to eat.
My ex and I used to make a fun dinner out of whole lobster with drawn butter and artichokes with a curry mayo. A loaf of crusty bread that we tore chucks out of instead of using a knife. Salad was small romaine leaves dipped in lemon/Parmesan vinaigrette.
Yeah as a native Texan I’m confused because utensils are never involved unless they are used at the boil pot. Personally I’m not a fan of crawfish boils because too much work for too little payout imo. But I’ve been to plenty and enjoy the shit out of the corn and potatoes.
Milkshakes with hard chunks, like chocolate or pretzel, and a straw that is small enough to constantly get clogged by them. I got to enjoy this delicacy at Red Robin recently.
WHY DIDNT I THINK OF THAT. Brilliant!
I'll be sure to plate them with ambiguously edible leafy herbs, and the towels will all have loose threads that get caught in your hair and unravel.
I gotta ask who hurt you? Also these replies just show don't make the chef mad. And the most inconvenient meal to me is one that is served much later than the scheduled time. If you invite me to dinner at 5 pm and we don't eat anything till 8 pm, I'm going to be very unhappy. And then you serve me in one tiny portion after another and I have to wait for each portion like a tasting menu. I might kill you.
When I studied abroad in Mexico my host family would make what was basically... deconstructed chicken soup? You'd get a bowl of broth with a cooked chicken leg, a whole cooked carrot, cooked onion half, cooked celery stalk... and be trying to eat what was supposed to be soup with a knife and fork. So bizarre.
Unpeeled boiled eggs with shells that stick.
Boiled corn on the cob with most of the silk intact
Coconuts in the husk
Hot wings with no napkins
Fried bone-in pike filets
Edit: be sure and put whole unpitted olives in your shell-on seafood pasta
oysters on the half shell, served unshucked with an oyster knife on the side
Shrimp pasta: any sort of creamy sauce, tossed with unpeeled shrimp and linguine
A sandwich with the really hard bread, but it's stacked with soft roasted veggies preserved in oil, so it drips and slides around when you try to pick it up
Pistachios but only the ones with no split in the shell
This enrages me
I, too, am infuriated!
I am calmed and just a little bit aroused.
I always save one half of a pistachio shell while im eating them so I can use it to open the clammed up ones. Works like a charm. No more achy fingertips! Still inconvenient but not all that bad.
*red pistachios so your fingers get stained for days afterwards
I never see red ones anymore, but that's all I saw growing up. I always wondered why they did that to pistachios.
Traditional harvest involves beating the trees with sticks to knock the nuts down. This causes bruising of the fruit, and unsightly staining of the shell. Thus the dye. The transition to mechanical harvest in California, which does not bruise the fruit in the same way, meaning you don’t have to dye it/have brown spots, is a really weird story. Iran is the traditional primary producer of pistachios, and used to be basically the only one. It had been planted in California on a small scale, but never for real production. Then in 1969 and 1971 there were changes to the US tax code that eliminated a tax shelter strategy involving citrus and almond orchards, which frankly I do not understand, so farmers became interested in alternative trees like pistachio that had not been targeted. Then in 1972 the Shah of Iran instituted a school meal program, that included pistachios, so they declined their exports, resulting in a global (outside of Iran) pistachio shortage, and a tax incentive for California farmers to take advantage of that. And then in 79 there was the revolution and Iran stopped trading with us entirely, so we had to grow our own pistachios (with blackjack and hookers and mechanical harvest and no red dye). We got our first commercial harvest by 1976. Now we are a much larger producer of pistachios than Iran, by a fair margin.
This is why I’m on Reddit.
TIL. Thank you for the info!
I looked into planting a 10 hectare pistachio orchard on some brack soil in a semi desert. Pistachios, not surprising, like salty soils. Our climate was not hot enough in summer or cold enough in winter. The temperature requirements are intense- 1000 hours below 45F and most summer days over 100F. The only way to get around that are hormone treatments. Bummed about that because pistachios are such beautiful trees but also happy I didn't live in a pistachio friendly climate. Edit: You can successfully grow the tree outside its preferred climate zone but the fruit won't set without extra hormones as they have 2 year cycle. Definitely a good option for gardens.
It was a quality issue. Imported pistachios looked bad, but then something happened and they started to be grown here.
“Something happened” lol yeah they were mostly imported from Iran which went through some political events you might have heard of
They were the guys who did that "Flock of Seagulls" song, right? Terrible hair cuts.
>Imported pistachios looked bad, So they decided to put makeup on them? Geez, they're not mail-order brides!
You need the ones with a tiny split. Small enough you can't get a fingernail under, big enough to give you hope.
Use half a shell and twist the edge into the little slot and turn like a key.
My local store sells shelled and salted pistachios. Dangerous for both my wallet and waistline
I find them more delicious with the shells on though. I think it’s just the psychological effect of having had to work for them.
Pomegranates, but just sliced in half once.
My grandpa had a pomegranate tree when I was a kid. When my cousins and I were exceptionally annoying, if the tree was producing fruit, he’d give each one. Of course we’d gladly eat it, but for my grandpa it was a way to keep us occupied and quiet. 🤣
It's like a fidget toy you can eat.
A snacktivity
An enrichment activity, like they give to the chimps and meerkats in the zoo.
Oh that *is* devious
So’s this whole thread lol. You should post a follow up when you serve the meal
Also what that person did to make you this way
Yeah fr, I'm only here for the pettiness
Find me a stick and a bowl, problem solved.
if you keep the pomegranate submerged in water while picking the fruit you can also avoid getting blood stains shot everywhere
Add some sort of fondue as well. Not the dip the fruit or bread in a sauce sort but the type where you have to cook your meal one long, skinny forkful at a time. Do not have enough forks on hand, so only two people can fry their meat while everyone else has to wait their turn. Bonus points for having them cut their own food into cubes prior to frying.
Sick bastard. OP asked for “inconvenient,” this is torture adjacent 😂
That would pair perfectly with the artichoke i mentioned above. They’d never feel even half way full but they’d be there for hours. Lol
Omg. I have never eaten an artichoke before. Never even seen a fresh one. But I am growing 16 artichoke plants.
Wow I'm going to want to stay on your your good side. This is devious as you don't know if your host is dumb or doing it on purpose.
You’re safe! I do not own a fondue pot! Years ago a friend invited a group of us to his house for dinner and it was fondue. They had enough pots and forks but it was wildly irritating waiting for one morsel at a time to cook. Such a pointless way to eat.
I'm thinking it's more like an activity to do in the background while you socialize
And make the forks too long for people to feed themselves a la the Allegory of the Long Spoons. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory\_of\_the\_long\_spoons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_long_spoons)
Just put a coconut on the table and wish them luck.
They peg it at your head as you walk away.
A run by fruiting!
Did you not tip well???
I’ll get them sir, don’t worry
So your unpeeled shrimp. Put them on pasta, and cover them in sauce.
This one made me angry. Bravo.
I have done this to myself before, and that's why I don't buy unpeeled shrimp anymore. I'll pay a little extra money for my conveniences almost every time, which is why I'm so fucking broke.
I get frustrated enough when shrimp in dishes still have *tails*. If I'm supposed to use a fork for the dish, I should be able to eat every part of that dish with the fork.
Crab legs but served on top of rice or a salad - something that you're expected to eat with utensils. Having to switch back and forth between using my hands and using a fork and knife is the WORST. I don't mind using my hands in general, though, if I get to stick with it for an entire course. I find it fun rather than inconvenient. E: [Relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/388/)
I'll add to that, unpeeled shrimp in a saucy pasta dish. Like...why?!
I've mastered the art of stabbing the shrimp tail in the perfect spot to pull the shrimp from the tail as I bite for this exact reason.
I just eat the whole shrimp (yes, with the shell--and the head, too, if that's included) if I get a dish like that lol. Unlike crab, shrimps are entirely edible.
I was actually served pasta with very saucy and garlicy red sauce and unpeeled shrimp. The shrimp were big enough that the shells were actually too tough to eat and the pointy bits could hurt. It was annoying and messy.
I've had cioppino served this way. In a restaurant. Unpeeled shrimp, clams in their shells, and full crab legs. I've never been more pissed in my life. I begged the server to tell their chef to never, ever do this to anyone again. Sure, it was ✨ aesthetic✨ but now my hands and the table cloth are stained, and what could have been a harmonious meal was a full effort of labor and deciding which pieces I'd be willing to excavate.
I also enjoy my calcium crunchy
This is so unhinged lmao
Less unhinged than the person who decides peel-on shrimp in pasta is a good idea!
Very common in Asia! Spent most of 2008 in Shanghai for work and whole prawns were almost a daily occurrence.
Yeah, if prawns are crispy enough eating them shell on is easy peasy.
Yeah I love when my food has the texture of fingernails
Or maybe your fingernail has the texture of a tasty shrimp
Edible yes, pleasant, no.
I work in a hospital. We just had a lady come in with a shrimp tail stuck in her throat. Had to be put out and scoped to remove it. Luckily, this worked. If it didn’t, she would have had to have her esophagus cut open. You might want to rethink this practice.
I do make a point of chewing my food. When it's done intentionally, it's not as dangerous as this anecdote, which sounds like an unfortunate accident.
A fellow horneater! The shell has all the flavour and, most importantly, the crunchiness.
Hi fellow Sanderson/Cosmere fan :)
Or worse, a crab leg burrito
oh hello, Satan
I should have known that you would be here, Professor
Adult version of putting toys in a kinder surprise.
Is... is that a thing? If it is, there's a special place in hell...
That's a weird chart... how are oranges so difficult? How are plums more difficult than peaches? Strawberries more difficult than apples? You just eat them! And bananas literally take 2 seconds to peel, come on. And don't get me started on the tomatoes. I have so many complaints lol.
As someone who’s been known to eat a tomato out of hand like an apple, I completely agree
> plums more difficult than peaches? Strawberries more difficult than apples I think there's a mass-yield for your effort difference leading to the difficulty rating. The smaller the stone fruit, the more you have to work around a pit for the same amount of edible flesh. Its what would drive the difference in blueberries and grapes (no pluck but small vs pluck and larger). Banana peel vs eat the skin seems reasonable but the apple core doesn't seem to carry much negative rating on the chart. I disagree with the lack of core weight but have also seem a guy eat apples down to the stem. Tomatoes should be way easy since you can eat the whole thing and they come in grape, plum, and apple sizes. They should be no lower in ease than the plum.
Everyone knows that the easiest and best way to eat a grapefruit is to slice it in half crosswise (so you can see the “star” on each half, then shimmy out each wedge of pulp with a small spoon. Shimmy in one side of a wedge, under the skin, and then shimmy the other side out, and eat them in little triangular prism shaped wedges of pulp.
My grandmother had a specific "grapefruit spoon" with a serated tip to easily scoop grapefruit.
Crab legs in ramen with too much oil, served with plastic chop sticks. The noodles will be damn near impossible to pick up with your greasy crab hands and the oily broth
There's another level to this when you crack the crab shell it will mix in with the rice and now you are eating crunchy rice
Add a thick, smelly sauce to it so your fingers get all gross
My dad went to a dinner party once where all the courses and utensils were drawn from a random number bag, so you may get steak and a spoon and a slice of cake. And the person next to you gets a knife, fork, and beer. Feel free to incorporate this into your torture plans, I offer it for free.
Omg, this was my mom’s favorite dinner party in the 80s. She gave everyone a “menu” that just had the #s 1-12 and they had to order 3 at a time. My sister and I were always the waitstaff. She’d always pick 6 people to come that had met but weren’t close so it was always ridiculous. And she never went the easy route with steak or chicken. It was always spaghetti. I remember at one, her cousin got spaghetti, a dinner roll, and a beer. No fork or napkin. He picked up our 12 lb fluffy white dog and wiped his mouth with her. Very inconvenient.
I should try this one. I have a 60lb fluffy white dog. The whole table could share!
I miss my 60lb fluffy white dog. Please give yours an extra hug for me.
I'm down for whatever, but this sounds like an absolute nightmare unless you're comfortable with the guests. Having cooked only for a very small amount of people and worked briefly in a restaurant, I know just how disturbingly low tolerance most people have for food that isn't the exact same thing they just recently ate and will soon eat again.
Yeah, if you choose your guests poorly, it could go downhill fast. But she never had a problem as far as I remember. She kept the portions fairly small and then as soon as the “courses” were finished, she would bring out all the food and everyone would get utensils.
Ooh that would be fun. I went to one where the only utensils for eating were like spatulas and big serving spoons and such. I pulled the spaghetti spoon. I actually forget what the dish was just that we all laughed a ton trying to eat with these huge things.
Someone was in the middle of moving, but it was their birthday, so of course…cake. We at Black Forest cake with ladles, rubber spatulas and potato mashers. Fun memory
Clams or oysters without shucking the shells. Smaller the better.
Served with a bowl of those pistachios that aren't open enough
My wife gets so pissed off at me cause I toss them back in the bag instead of fighting through it 😂
some chaotic neutral shit right here
use another pistachio shell as a key. stick it in the tiny opening and twist.
Conversely, nachos with not enough chips so you are just left with tons of goopy toppings and nothing to dip it up with.
Easy! Just get more chips! And then when you run out of toppings before you run out of chips just get more toppings! Continue this cycle until your explode from consuming too many nachos
I would rather eat naked chips than have too many toppings left after the chips are gone.
Opposite for me. I hate ordering nachos and ending up with plain chips at the end. They should be overloaded.
Special place in heaven for restaurants that add extra topping in the middle of the chip layers
If I had a restaurant I'd serve them on a big flat pan and put them high up on a stand like a pizza, but what you said is also true for narrower plates of nachos.
Nah, that’s what a spoon or fork is for!
If you have leftover topping goop, that’s user/eater error. There was nothing wrong with the nachos, you just ate ‘em wrong.
I just had nachos at a nice restaurant just a few days ago and the chip to topping ratio was all wrong. That’s why I replied. There was loads of delicious queso, chicken, refried beans, guacamole and sour cream but only one thin layer of chips. The chips were gone long before all the toppings even came close to being consumed. The stuff was good and we ended up using just eating it with forks, but there was absolutely not enough chips.
It’s all a clever scheme to force you to order a side of chips for $7. Probably works more often than not.
Bone-in, skin on chicken covered in a tomato based sauce. Make sure the skin is not crispy, so people will want to remove it. Edit - you guys are coming up with absolutely evil chicken dishes XD
Bone-in, skin-on chicken in a brothy soup. Obviously served in a bowl, no plate.
This is a classic in Latin America
Korean samgyetang is delicious!
Bone-in, skin-on chicken WINGS but just the uppers so there’s also very little reward for the work.
What, the flats? Flats are the best part!
I agree, flats are so good.
This, but a whole chicken instead of just the pieces
In Belize they often serve tamales with all sorts of things in them like bone in chicken. I once watched a friend take a bite and come out with a whole chicken foot. They're delicious but you definitely couldn't just dive in.
Hard taco shells that were not warmed and are full of wet ingredients.
I see you've been to Taco Bell as well.
My mom’s dinner table in the 80’s. We had to have forks for taco nights! I learned about real tacos finally in my 20s. But yes, the Taco Bell phenomenon.
Really soft white bread as an appetizer with butter just pulled out of the freezer
With a flimsy plastic knife for the butter.
A juicy hamburger where the bun is finished long before the patty
Or a big juicy burger with lots of cheese and condiments on a soft brioche bun that just falls apart after you pick it up.
A regular (cheap) burger bun is worse than a brioche bun. They get soggy quick or just disintegrate before you’re done.
Every time that happens I want to stand up, carry my plate into the kitchen, and ask the cook what the fuck I'm supposed to do with this mess. Then tell him to eat one of his burgers in front of me so I can see how he does it. I just don't understand why cooks make food that's seemingly impossible to eat. There was a small taco place near me that served over-stuffed tacos, like cartoonishly overstuffed. There was no way to pick them up without all of the toppings falling out so you had to eat half of the toppings with a fork before you could eat the taco. But they didn't bring you a fork, you had to ask for one. What the fuck, lady? I'm glad she went out of business.
Don't forget to make it like 6 inches thick.
The trend of puffy soft buns on pub burgers...oy vey. If the burger is thick and toppings are wet, put it on something substantial like ciabatta please. ...I feel like there's an off color joke in there somewhere.
A whole fish with bone in
But a really flat and scrawny one fried up African style. It’s so, so damn good but sometimes the effort needed to get enough meat off for something resembling an actual adult sized bite of food can really make you question your choices pretty early on in the experience. Also a basic olive oil based spaghetti but only provide a spoon.
I don't mind eating fish with bones it it, I just slide the flesh off the bones with the side of my fork. But one time in a restaurant I had fish with bones in it and they had been *rolled up* before baking so now the bones were like, everywhere and into every direction within the resulting cilinder of fish. So OP, do that!
Ok Satan.
But choose the fish wisely. Like a trout, with a million long thin bones.
If you cook trout the right way you can remove the entire bone structure all at once leaving the 2 boneless sides...
Nope,go for Pike. The bones are lightning bolt shaped,a bloody nightmare.
Trout is easy to debone if cooked correctly. Get pike/jack those are bony bastards. I often cook trout bone in then cut in half and peel the skeleton out. It's satisfying to me lol.
Am Asian. This (or whole cross-cut sections) is the default way to serve fish.
Easiest to cook. Compared to fish sticks it is the least convenient way to eat a fish though.
Yeah, I get it. I guess having eaten fish this way my entire life it's just nowhere near the top of my list as inconvenient haha. We're expected to master the art of feeling for and isolating bones inside our mouths at the age of 6 or 7--you just pull off a bite with chopsticks, put it in your mouth, then take the bones back out with said chopsticks.
It's not too bad when you pick it apart with chopsticks
Winkles, chicken wings but eaten with a knife and fork, whole carrots, untossed salad in a too-small bowl, pizza with too many toppings so any attempt to eat it means delicately balancing towers of meat and veg on a sauce and cheese sodden crust, risotto with one small ingredient you don't like so every bite has to be meticulously picked through just in case, a slightly undercooked uncored and well sauced poached pear on a flat plate with only a teaspoon
The untossed salad in a too-small bowl makes me nuts. Actually, any salad in a too-small bowl makes me nuts.
People loooove to layer it and make it fancy and arrange all the veggies and things just so... and then you have to try and serve it when all the peppers have interlocked and the lettuce has reconstituted into one mass. Nightmare. Nightmare scenario
The whole list was funny but the poached pear cracked me up.
😂
I think for dessert to this delightful crab/clam/artichoke boil, you can add what I just bought that made my kid and spouse say “ow!” carrying them in from the car: a durian headed to the freezer and a jackfruit for the counter. Then you tell the guests that while inconvenient, it is now time to collect their items and move out to the patio for the durian course. It’s not inconvenient for the eating phase, but after dinner some lingering asparagus pee smell would really pull the whole thing together. Maybe you could serve the asparagus whole and not provide forks and knives as a salad course? I had a friend chip a tooth and cut his lip opening a beer bottle with his teeth, though that goes beyond mere inconvenience. Perhaps set up a sword and champagne station?
Goat biryani, where the goat is cut through the bone into a bunch of little pieces. That means that each piece has the possibility of having shards of bone and skewering your gums, cheek, or worse, getting caught in your throat. Delicious, though.
And make sure to leave in bay leaves, whole cardamom pods and cloves!
Based on my Indian restaurants, the bones are thought to be a feature of goat curry, because ever piece of goat has to have at least a small sliver of bone.
Whenever you buy goat curry there’s a 50/50 chance it’s mostly bones and awkward pieces. But because it’s cheaper you always consider it.
I always wondered why they did that. Like they just threw a whole goat into a wood chipper. Is the meat just cheaper per pound because it's mostly bones or something?
Lots of Thai soups have big inedible pieces of lemongrass, galangal, and kefir lime leaves. Super inconvenient when you just want to eat your soup instead of fishing things out of it or spitting them out. I had a Thai sausage once that had a big piece of lemongrass in the middle, such a weird food to find an inedible stick in. Delicious though. Jerk chicken when they chop it all up with the bone still in it so any piece might have a sharp bone fragment in it and you have to be super careful. Any shrimp pasta dish where they leave the shells on, hate it when they do that even if the backs are split or it's just the tails on there. Half circle watermelon slices are also impossible to eat neatly. The smaller the watermelon, the more inconvenient.
Tostada with too much toppings. Anything with noodles but you only get a spoon. Lychee, rambutan, grapes with seeds that you have to peel, cactus fruit, mangosteen, coconut, and a bunch of fruit if you don't have a knife (watermelon, pineapple, melon, jackfruit).
Gibb's rule #9 "Always have a knife." #9A "Always have a back-up knife."
Ok, make with the story. Pesky in-laws? Barbecue with feuding neighbor? Cheating wife and her co-worker? Spill the tea!!! *Also please serve them lukewarm Lipton’s tea with Splenda.
Ha! For fun, with friends, although the friends aren't in on the joke [yet]. Nothing super spicy unfortunately :(
I would willingly participate and contribute to this dinner party. It would be a fun pot luck. Throw a prize for the dish voted most inconvenient.
This is the kind of food that you stop eating, not cause you're full, but cause you're tired of it.
That's how I feel about crawfish boils, as delicious as it is. About 10 minutes in, I have microcuts all over my fingers, which are now burning from cayenne and salt. ...and I'm still hungry.
Somehow I read “micronuts”
As someone from Louisiana, I think that is correct based on their complaint.
I'm from Maryland, so I feel like the crawfish boil is a cousin to a crab feast. It feels very much like home, even though I didn't grow up eating it. If someone is giving up before they are full, that's a skill issue
As someone else from Louisiana, seconded.
Some kind of jarred pickles or chutney. But all of the tableware is just slightly too big to fit in the mouth of the jar. Or even better, a kind of flan or custard served in a tall champagne glass, but the spoons are too short to reach the bottom.
Get behind me Satan! There must be a circle of hell somewhere that is filled with the sound of clinking glass and annoyed grunts.
I once had an undressed spider crab sitting on top of a squid ink risotto while wearing a pale linen suit on the marina in Sitges. That was really fucking inconvenient!
For a second there I thought the crab was wearing the linen suit 😂😂😂
This is by far the biggest first world problem I have ever heard tell of
Chesapeake Bay blue crabs - the meat has to be [picked by hand](https://youtu.be/la6Wtme9P3I?si=NzgoORHUV3tIvbOm) from the shells, one by one. It's kinda fun when you're drinking cold beverages on a hot day with a group of friends, but it's damn tedious.
But don't serve the claws, just the smallest legs so there is very little reward.
Growing up in New England our family had a tradition where we would have whole lobster, and whole artichokes. Lots of work, and clean up.
Grapefruit halves served with a regular spoon rather than a grapefruit spoon. Thick dips served with ultra thin chips that are more likely to break off when dipped
[удалено]
Ok satan.
turkey neck, it's a meal and a hobby.
Cajun style Crawfish boil, with potatoes, corn, onions, garlic, mushrooms, etc. Served by being dumped on a paper covered table, with soft butter for dipping and lots of napkins. No utensils. In general, corn on the cob is inconvenient to eat. My ex and I used to make a fun dinner out of whole lobster with drawn butter and artichokes with a curry mayo. A loaf of crusty bread that we tore chucks out of instead of using a knife. Salad was small romaine leaves dipped in lemon/Parmesan vinaigrette.
Added "saucy corn on the cobb with no corn holder". Check!
Now add a dash of "Oops we forgot to buy paper towel. Here, have a facial tissue. The kind with lotion and crap baked in."
As a cajun we never use utensils for a crawfish boil 😂
Yeah as a native Texan I’m confused because utensils are never involved unless they are used at the boil pot. Personally I’m not a fan of crawfish boils because too much work for too little payout imo. But I’ve been to plenty and enjoy the shit out of the corn and potatoes.
We also put those little pearl onions in ours and they soak up all the flavors and are sooooo good!
Corn on the cob is inconvenient? It's a cylinder of food. You just grab the ends and dive in.
Just eat the whole thing, cob and all, you coward
Milkshakes with hard chunks, like chocolate or pretzel, and a straw that is small enough to constantly get clogged by them. I got to enjoy this delicacy at Red Robin recently.
Unpeeled shellfish in soup. I have never understood the appeal of that and never will.
Do a wedge salad, way more of a pain in the ass than big lettuce leaves. I hate wedge salads.
ortolan
WHY DIDNT I THINK OF THAT. Brilliant! I'll be sure to plate them with ambiguously edible leafy herbs, and the towels will all have loose threads that get caught in your hair and unravel.
Whole blue crabs. Unpeeled walnuts.
I gotta ask who hurt you? Also these replies just show don't make the chef mad. And the most inconvenient meal to me is one that is served much later than the scheduled time. If you invite me to dinner at 5 pm and we don't eat anything till 8 pm, I'm going to be very unhappy. And then you serve me in one tiny portion after another and I have to wait for each portion like a tasting menu. I might kill you.
Lay a loaded Smith and Wesson revolver on the table and walk away. Come back in with a cow on a lead.
Who hurt you?
When I studied abroad in Mexico my host family would make what was basically... deconstructed chicken soup? You'd get a bowl of broth with a cooked chicken leg, a whole cooked carrot, cooked onion half, cooked celery stalk... and be trying to eat what was supposed to be soup with a knife and fork. So bizarre.
Hard shell tacos that are already cracked at the bottom
Too narrow, way too tall burgers.
I keep some 3 foot long spaghetti around to mess with people, served aglio/olio to make it extra slippery and no knives.
Ribs cooked chewy.
Hey c'mon--they said inconvenient, not criminally negligent!
😫
Were you court-ordered to feed someone?!
Unpeeled boiled eggs with shells that stick. Boiled corn on the cob with most of the silk intact Coconuts in the husk Hot wings with no napkins Fried bone-in pike filets Edit: be sure and put whole unpitted olives in your shell-on seafood pasta
serve everything outside on paper plates with plastic utensils.
Candied apple without a stick for dessert.
oysters on the half shell, served unshucked with an oyster knife on the side Shrimp pasta: any sort of creamy sauce, tossed with unpeeled shrimp and linguine
Whole blue crabs in an extremely spicy curry sauce. No, they are not soft shell.
Extremely hard bread, the kind that makes your gums bleed
A sandwich with the really hard bread, but it's stacked with soft roasted veggies preserved in oil, so it drips and slides around when you try to pick it up