European P's - eating w/a fork?

She is using the backside to hold down the food while she cuts it. Then she turns it slightly to take it to her mouth, at least she did it in the section I saw, -didn’t watch The Whole thing. That is how I have always seen it done. It looks weird to me if you hold down the food with the front of the fork.

Yes, & we eat like that in Australia too...because even though we were shipped here as criminals, we still kept some manners from the old country!

That's considered the correct way - hold the fork in the left hand, tines facing down and then still in the left hand take the food to the mouth. The fork is not turned with the tines facing up at all.

We don't hold the fork in the "carry" position and load food onto it. She only turns the fork in the video because she can't keep the food on her fork the way she usually would.

Mostly yes, sometimes you have to glue the peas in place with some mashed potato though!
I don't know what the official etiquette book says, but in real life exceptions are made for some small food like peas and rice.

Using the fork like this would be considered bad manners at a formal dinner, and if you are with people all of the same cultural background - but again, in real life no one really cares that much and we have such a mix of cultures that everyone pretty much eats as they want...as long as you aren't doing universally disgusting things like shovelling too much food in at once or talking with your mouth full.

On a daily basis, even if I am eating at home alone, this is still how I will eat and how most of my Aussie-born friends will eat.
It was definitely ingrained as being the right way when I was a kid & as a child I would have been corrected for holding the fork the other way. I don't have my own kids - so not sure what they are taught as being "correct" now.

That is the correct way to hold the fork. I am from up-state ny and I had really never pay attention to how people held their utensils until watching my husband’s sister in law eat. Oh holy shit I never saw anybody use a fork like a manure shovel before!

You can turn the fork over and push peas on to the tubes with the butter knife.

I was more annoyed by her seemingly fake Irish accent and the continuous comments about this isn’t an Irish sausage etc . I think the whole thing is stupid

I thought the correct way to eat with a fork and knife was with the fork upside down in the left hand, knife in the right hand (like she does). BUT when you are done cutting, you put down your knife, take the fork with your right hand, turn it right side up, grab the food, and transfer it to your mouth.

If you needed help getting food onto the fork, you’d use the knife to help scoop it onto the tines (right side up, fork still in left hand), then you’d still transfer the fork with the food into your right hand to eat.

Apparently, we Americans are uncouth, ill mannered barbarians.

I can’t remember the last time I ate something that couldn’t be cut with just the side of my fork. Like the other pea above me said, very few foods actually require a knife.

She's using her fork the "right" way to me, but she is holding it awkwardly. I would have my left index finger pointing down the fork and putting pressure to cut, she seems to have her hand sideways? I couldnt watch the whole thing because I cant stand watching people eat.

Also, i think your hash browns are different from ours. Here they are usually one largish triangle, not lots of small pieces.

Woe betide me if I ate like this growing up! I can still hear my mother saying “use your fork properly, it is not a shovel”. However nowadays a meal of, say, curry and rice or mac and cheese would be eaten your way.

The handles of the cutlery should be placed in the palms too, not rested over the top of the hand like a pen.

I don't think that it looks right to put your fork down and switch hands just to put the food in your mouth. I'm left-handed, though, so it's never been on my radar, I guess.

I do use a knife to cut my meat, and sometimes I keep my fork tines-down, but I do normally use my fork the other way when eating things that need to be picked up. It does seem pretty awkward to try to balance something like shredded hashbrowns on the back of the fork.

Me too, fellow lefty.

I use my knife and fork in the same way she does. Like the other UK peas it was drummed in to me as a child. Although there are a few exceptions, I only ever use a fork for eating pasta and risotto.

I couldn’t watch much of that video as I found her really annoying.