However, orzo (meaning barley) can be split into perlato (pearl ... Nor, the netizens of r/iamveryculinary point out, do orecchiette (meaning “ears”) listen to us eating them.

After drying the barley plants, which stand about 1.2 meters tall, the workers remove their ears, roots and nodes and use scissors to cut them into sections measuring about 20 centimeters long.