/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>11351400
Those aren't for toast, they're for tea bags.

I use them, they're not completely useless. You provide them on a saucer with the tea and people can leave the tea bag in until it's steeped to their preference and then use the tongs to remove, squeeze (if desired) and discard it.

Chinese sometimes use them to avoid getting your fingers on people's tea cups and washing cups in boiling water before serving, a Chinese tea set has a bunch of different single-use tools for doing tea stuff. There's tongs for picking up the pressed ball of tea, a spike for breaking it up (or breaking off a portion from a brick), scoops for loose leaves and the wet tongs are also for picking leaves out of cups if they drop in and for washing the tea cup in boiling water without using hands etc.

In the English tradition, they're a unitasker so are a waste of space but I keep one on my desk for tea bags because I hate getting my fingers dirty or wet and I'd have to clean tea of them if I squeezed a bag with them. You can also use a spoon and wrap the string around it but I don't use sugar in my tea so no need for a spoon anyway.