Pasta salad - using hands to mix?!??

[SomethingLikeAPhenomenom]

DH was making a mayo pasta salad today as friends over for a BBQ. He'd put all the ingredients in a big bowl, I walked in on him using his hands to mix it all together. AIBU to have called him out on how disgusting and inappropriate this is? No idea where he's got the idea that hands are better than spoons. Am now getting the silent treatment - genuinely now questioning if I am in the wrong here and this is normal behaviour??

I definitely have never done this. Just feels odd and a bit gross.

But chefs work in sterile environments

Of course they don’t. Even operating theatres aren’t sterile. The field of operation may be but the theatre isn’t.

I find it gross because I’m thinking off all the crap under his nails getting mixed in with the food

This is why I don’t eat anyone’s home cooking🤮

Of*

True Vique - it would depend for me what his general hygiene is like. It’s taken me 8 years to train DP to wash his bloody hands before cooking and he used to work in a professional kitchen

I remember watching Two Fat Ladies and when one of them was making pastry she said it was good for cleaning your fingernails!!

It’s just not necessary, spoons would do just as well.

Jamie Oliver is definitely to blame, he would positively encourage it.

Not all pasta salads have mayo on them though, this one is a nice example.

I find threads like this hysterical.

I'm weird but I dont like it. Even if hands are washed there could be skin or something fall off the hands. Yes I'm weird.

As long as he washed his hands first, no problem.

”But chefs work in sterile environments“

Even the cleanest restaurant kitchen is not going to be sterile, @SomethingLikeAPhenomenom - I used to work in an operating theatre, and even in there, only specific things are sterile.

Presumably your dh had handled whatever ingredients were in the pasta salad - chopped peppers/onions/tomatoes, for example - do you object to him touching these? As long as he washed his hands properly before starting, I can’t see the big problem with what he did.

You know when a boxed cake says 'hand decorated'?

That really does mean by hand.

You must have problem at sushi restaurants. They handle fish and rice with their hands, in front of you.

The OP said a few posts back that he doesn't use hot water??

Hopefully he's washed his hands before he prepared the salad.

He must have touched everything that went into the salad with his bare hands - surely no one, even on MN, prepares a salad with a knife and fork - so what's unhygienic about mixing it together with his hands?

Personally, I can't imagine how unpleasant it must feel to have one's hands smothered in mayonnaise, but that's a whole other issue.

How do you think chefs in restaurants make it? Hands all the way.

Chefs making pasta salad 🤣

@SomethingLikeAPhenomenom

But chefs work in sterile environments and have a basic understanding of hygiene, no? Actually I don't think I want to know if they don't! Am getting the feeling maybe I'm being a bit upright then, but DH isn't the biggest fan of hot water.... (and yes I have asbestos hands from so much hot water, not much feeling left!)

Here you go. Quoted

"DH isn't the biggest fan of hot water"

If he washes reasonably thoroughly with soap and water, even if it isn’t hot water, this should still make his hands clean enough to handle food.

Unless there is a massive drip feed coming, he has been preparing food this way, and with the same hygiene standards for as long as the OP has known him, and people don’t routinely get food poisoning from his food.

I thought we still weren't supposed to be sharing food?

However, salad is absolutely supposed to be mixed by hand

I do this all the time with potato salad, however now upon thinking about it I’d probably use my hands with plastic gloves on. But with squeaky clean hands? Can’t get worked up by it at all!

@Sunnydayshereatlast

Once caught dh washing cooked rice under the hot tap. Bought a rice maker.

@Sunnydayshereatlast please tell me if I am being really thick here, but was is wrong with that?? I always wash cooked rice under the hot tap!

By the time any food gets to us it would have been handled by at least one if not multiple people along the line

Personally I would mix it with a spoon but by that point surely the ingredients have been handled by him if he chopped up stuff?

I don’t understand how clean hands would be “less clean”
than a spoon, washed in the same water and washing liquid (with the same hands washing said spoon). If you think about it surely it’s irrational to think spoons are more clean than hands?

@peasaregood

How are restaurant kitchens sterile? they're not operating theatres

Even operating theatres are not sterile...

Yanbu. Unacceptable. Do was making chilli the other day and I caught him breaking up the mince with his hands 🤢🤮

I trust my wash hands more than gloves from god knows what factory...

Also. Cold water is ok. You don't have to wash in hot as long as you don't use just the water but use soap