More Tips and Tricks

The dreaded onion!
I honestly don’t know of anyone that loves to cut onions, or even particularly likes it. Unfortunately the onion is a staple of almost all cuisines, so it makes it almost impossible to avoid cutting into its raw and most potent state. In professional kitchens everyone has to be the onion cutter at one time or another and no one is allowed to cry about it! A guy I used to work with said that he held a job where his morning consisted of cutting cases and cases of onions before he could move on to the rest of his prep work for the day. (Whole cases ended up being 50 pounds of onions each. Yikes!) I never complained about having to cut an onion or two after that.
Usually people take an onion, lop off the ends, peel and chop as fast as they can to try and avoid watery burning eyes. It may seem like this is the fastest way, but when we keep exposing and breaking the cell walls of the onion we give those burning vapors more and more opportunity to seep out and into our eyes.

It is important to remember that the more a vegetable rolls around on the board the harder and more dangerous it will be to cut with a sharp knife. In order to create stability cut one side of the vegetable to make it flat…here is how you go about cutting an onion safely and with out too much crying:

Cut off the top end and keep the root end in tact

Place the onion on the flat side we just cut off (by continuing to place the onion on its exposed flat surface we also keep the vapors reaching our eyes)
Cut the onion in half right through the root.
Place one half of the onion to the side and lay the other half down on its flat exposed side.
Peel back the skin of the onion, all the layers that you do not want to eat.

Now you have only three easy cuts to make!


One- place your palm on the top of the onion, and hold your fingers up so that they will be out of the way of the knife….cut about three horizontal cuts to the root end but not through the root.
Two- turn the onion so the root end points away from you…place the point of your knife in the onion right next to the root end and again not through the root…make about 4-5 slices like these.
Three- turn the onion so it is again parallel to you and slice through, from the top down to the root.

The root is what holds the onion together, limiting the exposure of the inside of the onion and making it easier to cut. Now you have diced half of your onion, you can save the rest for later, and quickly sweep your dice into a bowl, set aside covered for when you are ready to use it!