Woudn't it be nice if we could do without all the plastic forkes, knives and spoons we get with takeaway?

One alternative would be cutlery from rice. It is eays to make, breakes as easy as the plastik stuff and dekays in a short time.

After an intense session of scrubbing a pot, that I had used for rice cooking the day before, I had an idea. The rice had dried and turned hard and the single rice grains where sticking together prety well, but the structure of seperate grains, glued together helped me to take the lups of rice apart. On the button of the pot was part, where no single rice grains where glued together. Instead, therer was a more uniform mass of rice slime. That was much harder to clean.

First, I made a neckless for my girlfrend, but with time, the rice got brittle and fell apart. I needed a usecase, where the thing didn't have to hold for ever.

I found it, when thinking about the Instructables science of cooking contest What if I could make a knive out of rice. The knive allone looked too dangerous for my taste, so I added a fork and a spoon. Then I thought this might be usefull, to replace plastik cutlery to some extent.

Step 1: Cooking the Rice

Cook the rice, very long, in fact, you should overcook it, the more it disolves into a gooey mush, the better. Keep steering the rice and add water from time to time.

Step 2: Shaping the Cutlery

First, grab a hand full of rice, role and press it in your hand, to further breake down the rice grains and make sure, that they stick together nicely.

For the fork, two fork tines gives better stability. Take care not to make the spoon too big and the knive blade needs to be thin, to be able to cut deep into thick things. I have a foto, where I cut into part of a zucchini. I had also cut into the whole zucchini, but cot stuck, because the blade was too thick.

Step 3: Smoothing the Surface

Smoothing the surface makes the structure hold better together, cutting easier, using the spoon and fork more enjoyable.

Wet your hand in water and stroke over the suface. Here you can make some corrections to the form as well.

Make sure, that the blade has a halo of a very thin layer of rice mush. We will later breake this away, to get a sharp cutting edge.

Step 4: Baking

Bake the cutlery until it seems dry and hard. Trun from time to time and test with a knive, whether it is ready. Poke little holes in the cutlery, so the water can escape.

Be carefull, in my case, the tip of the knive fell of, because I backed it too long, or made it too thin.

Step 5: Neaten the Edges

Carefully go over the edges and breake of protruding material.

Step 6: Usage

Like with plastic cutlery, you have to be a little carefull not to breake anything. the knive worked well for cutting a zucchini in small peaces, the fork was a bit unstable and the spoon worked well for stearing and drawing yogurt. After a bit more, than an houre in the yogurt, the spoon got soft. All in all, the spoon and knive worked prety well, while he fork as a little fragile, but able to prong a peace of cheese and zucchini.

Thanks for reading,

Philipp