Breaking pasta and other food-related faux pas that annoy culinary experts and purists

Italians are fiercely proud and protective of their national cuisine and rightly so. So don’t be too surprised if your Italian friends get upset if you snap a handful of spaghetti so that it fits in the pan – or worse still, order a pizza with pineapple topping, possibly the ultimate sacrilege.

Seeing as today, October 17 is National Pasta Day, let’s take a moment to look at why you should never break any dry, long pasta, such as spaghetti, spaghettini, spaghettoni, linguine, bucatini, ziti…

Long pasta should be added to a pan of boiling, salted water whole – even if the top half is sticking out of the water – within a minute or two, the submerged part will soften, leaving the rest to slip into the pan on its own.

Long pasta like spaghetti needs to be cooked this way because of the way it is eaten. The correct way of eating perfectly cooked al dente spaghetti is by twirling a small amount of pasta on your plate with a fork. This gives you a bite-sized nest wrapped around the top of your fork – just enough to fit in your mouth. Smaller cuts just don;t work the same – they will slip off your fork, making it too messy.

Other food faux pas

When you travel around you may notice that the people in the location where you are visiting have particular habits or customs with how they serve or consume food and drinks. If you miss out on them and don’t follow suit, you are likely to get some stares from those around you.

Take for example eating pizza. Are you one that uses cutlery or just grab it in your hands and chow it down? The former is the proper way to eat it in Chicago, and the old country, while in New York the latter is the custom.

To get an idea of what some of these food-related faux pas may be, the question “What is your country’s equivalent of breaking spaghetti?” has been put to social media users. Here are some of the responses.

Food-related habits that annoy culinary experts and purists

One common response from people is that you should never put ketchup on a hot dog, the only exception to that rule is for kids. No where is this rule more heavily enforced than in the Windy City, where some famous local restaurants refuse to serve the red sauce.

That led Heinz’s to launch a campaign, installing ketchup dispensers in front of them that drew the ridicule of former Chicago resident Stephen Colbert.

Putting ketchup on your steak is also a no-no, especially in Texas. And social media users pleaded not to order them well-done.

As a matter of fact, putting ketchup on a number of different inappropriate foods seems to be one of the main complaints across the comments online.

In Canada, you’d be ill-advised to put shredded cheese on poutine, the nation’s beloved comfort food. The French fries should only be topped with brown gravy and cheese curds.

If you are in Italy and Parmesan cheese is not served with the dish you ordered, don’t ask for it. That is unless you want to truly insult your host, and potentially find yourself on the street.

Breaking pasta and other food-related faux pas that annoy culinary experts and purists Important: Fish dishes are NOT served with parmesan cheese

If you don’t want to be uncouth while eating sushi, don’t mix the wasabi with soy sauce, especially if it is freshly grated. That’s just one of many transgressions that you can cause at a sushi restaurant according to Huffington Post.