"No Tears" Chopped Onions

 I used to be a big-time onion crier. Like the end of The Notebook style crying. I’ve owned a pair of onion goggles, put a piece of bread in my mouth, and cut refrigerated onions to avoid the tears. Nothing worked very well, and I’d always end up fanning my stinging eyes in another room. It all changed when I took a knife skills class. The instructor taught me a technique for cutting onions that minimizes onion “weeping” – the milky liquid that runs out of onions when you chop them. That liquid contains the bulk of the crying compounds. Cut it correctly – and quickly – and you’ll speed up prep time and eliminate (or at least minimize) crying.

Step 1: Peel the onion, and cut it in half through the stem. (The stem will hold it all together while you’re cutting)

Step 2: Place one onion half flat on the cutting board. Make thin slices in the onion from one side to the other, starting your cut just below the stem. (Keep your fingers curled, with your middle finger a little farther forward and curled than the ones on either side to protect yourself from getting cut.)

Step 3. Cut into onion at a perpendicular angle from what you did in Step 2. Make two cuts: one in the middle, and one near the top at a slight angle.

Step 4. Chop the onion!

Step 5. Keep chopping until you get to the stem end. If you ever feel uncomfortable or that the onion is unsteady, just flip it down and finish chopping.

One More Thing: Keep Those Scraps!
Keep the onion peel and stems and add them to a stock bag in the freezer. When you’ve filled the freezer-safe bag with vegetable scraps, you can make a vegetable stock. Here’s are some tips about storing scraps from TheKitchn, and a recipe from Simple Bites that shows you exactly how to turn your scraps into gold(en) stock. 🙂