Kamayan or, Eating With Your Hands
a Filipino tradition
Kamayan, the Filipino practice of eating with your hands, is “a tradition that dates back before colonization,” according to Camille’s Substack. Growing up, my family ate with forks and spoons as Filipinos do, but once in a while, my mom would eat certain dishes with her hands. She said the food tasted better that way.
This is unlike eating a sandwich or something like Twizzlers, which are dry. Filipino food usually consists of a stew or a dish with sauce over white rice. Eating it with your hands means getting them dirty. I can’t stand food on my hands, and I can only eat rice with a fork or a spoon.
Don’t get me wrong—I don’t eat pizza with a knife and fork, but I usually eat pieces with crust rather than the ones in the middle. I tend not to order sandwiches dripping with sauce or burgers that contain an egg. I generally don’t like using more than one napkin. Is that weird?
So for me, kamayan is out of the question when it comes to Filipino food. You use one hand to scoop up some rice and meat and bring it to your mouth. I can’t do it. For me, it’d be like eating pasta with my hands. I can easily pop a handful of popcorn into my mouth but can’t pick up a messy handful of food. This is a tradition that sadly, is lost on me, which brings on feelings of not being Filipino enough.
It’s only recently that I’ve wanted to learn about my culture because many of our traditions never made it to the States, at least in my family. I didn’t grow up with many Filipino friends with whom I could uphold these traditions. I always felt the way we did things at home was foreign even though I grew up doing it that way, and eating with a fork at my other friends’ houses was more “American.” And I wanted to be American. Now I want to embrace the Filipino part of me.
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I personally don’t like the feeling of greasy or soupy food in my hands. In the summers, I went home to Ilocos, my mother‘s hometown. I remember my cousins there laughed at me because I didn’t know the proper way to eat with my hands (agkammet). You have to the squeeze rice into a ball so that it’s easier to bring it to your mouth.
I love eating with my hands but I only do it if the meal is dry and if I am at home. it’s really icky for dishes with sauces. But sometimes I can get really lazy to do kamayan because I have to clean my hands really good after hahaha. So if I get lazy I just use spoon and fork even if it’s fried fish. It’s okay if you never do it. There are other Filipino practices you can try cultivate.