The Best Ways Cut Onions (And The Worst) | Epicurious

Hi, I'm Frank Proto, I'm a professional chef and culinary instructor and this is everything you need to know about how to cut

onions

. This isn't bad at all, it's sweet. If I can smell the onion coming out of my pores, we'll do it. We'll go over the

best

methods to peel and cut

onions

with the least amount of tears. We're talking slicing, chopping, grating, just to name a few. This is chopping onions 101. Onions are the backbone of so many tasty dishes, each dish needs a different flavor. type of cut and those cuts determine how much flavor your onions will have, let's get into the first chapter how to peel your onions.

I'm going to make everyone on set cry today, wait, wait, wait, wait, before we get into anything, let's address the tears and the Myths Onions contain sulfur compounds and an enzyme called synthase. As soon as onions are cut, those two elements combine to form a chemical compound called synpropenophilic oxide. Without propenethyl oxide, those compounds are released into the air and that is what irritates the glands in your Eyes, there are many myths and methods that people say will stop you from crying. Some of the methods that might work is to make sure you cut with a sharp knife.

Avoid cutting the onion near the root end, but honestly, that's the only thing that has worked. I'm wearing my contact lenses now that we take all that off it's time to peel there are a few different

ways

to peel onions and it all depends on what you're going to use them for the first way I'm going to show you is the way we teach in school culinary. This is not my preferred method, but it is something you should learn just to have it as a skill. You need two knives, a paring knife and a chef's knife.

For this part, I'll use a paring knife. Typically what you will do with a knife is remove the bottom and then peel the skin all the way to the root end. Make sure you remove the dry skin because dry skin is basically paper, now you want to leave the root. intact, but you don't want any of these kinds of ugly root ends, so you're just going to cut this flat. I'll leave the root end intact, especially for when we're slicing and dicing, this keeps the onion together so it doesn't fall apart as you cut it and that's classic culinary school husk.

Part of the reason I don't like this method is that I have to use two knives, I use a paring knife and then I have to put this down and I cut it with my chef's knife the method I use daily when I peel my onions It's a little different I learned it from one of my cooks I'll never forget them Alberto Alberto said chef you're doing it wrong and I was a chef so I thought my prep cook was telling me how to cut onions. Those are the

best

people to learn from because they do it more than you yell at my friend Alberto.

I'm going to cut both ends. I'm not worried about the root end because when I cut it it will be a little bit different method and then I cut it in half and just remove the first layer. People will say, "Oh, chef, you wasted so much, but when I went to culinary school they taught me to use this on my stand, so it's not a waste. Now my method may not work if you're making onion rings or grating the onion, but it works for almost all other cuts once you're done peeling, you want to make sure you clean the cutting board of all the skin, any bits and pieces, you can see this onion here has a little bit of skin, you want to make sure to let it come off, this is edible, this is like paper, you can also take napkins and paper towels and put them on your food now that our onions are peeled, let's see how we're going to cut them, we'll start by slicing and there are a few

ways

you can do this.

Do this, you can do full rings, half rings, thick slices, thin slices and julienne, we use julienne cutting when we don't want the onions to fall apart, so something like a French onion soup, you want to see these slices. of onion there all. the onions have these lines that I'm cutting with those lines and that's my julienne so I follow the curve of the onion just to get even slices so you'll see my knife follows the curve once I get here I drop it and start to follow the curve again of the onion, another way to cut an onion is to cut it into rings and this is where I use that nice peeled onion with the culinary school method, the root is intact, normally you want the onion to be flat so that It doesn't roll but when it comes to rings it's always going to roll a little bit so you want to make sure you have a good grip and with thin rings I'll just make sure you have a good sharp knife, this one I would use maybe. salad and then you can make thick rings that you would use for onion rings.

Now I change my grip there and grab it on both sides and cut it like this with halves, you would just cut the onion in half and peel it. Again, I don't have the stem on this one, I'm just going to make it nice and thin, this is great for side dishes, I also use it for sandwiches and then you can make it nice and thick as well as use thick half rings for something like fajitas. or something you want to give a little onion to. Now let's start dicing the onions. We are going to review fine cutting into small dice and medium dice.

I'm going to make small dice first and this is how you would do it culinary wise. In true school fashion, I'm going to cut it through the root end, leaving the root end that will hold my onion together intact. I'm going to leave it on the flat end of the root, away from me. I'm just going to cut, but not completely. the tip of my knife doesn't cut all the way, go all the way to the right, turn it, cut it, we're going to move our knife or go through it and cut a small dice. Now you can turn this end piece over and make a few more cuts. out of it, but you can always use this for broth.

I would use it as a garnish on something maybe like tacos. I would also use this to sauté in a soup where I want the onions to break down. Now I want to show them to you. Small dice with my method is similar to the culinary school method, only much faster. I think it's at least a third faster. I grab the root end and pull it away. Now I'm going to cut, but not completely. and basically what I'm doing here is cutting it along its natural separations. I'm going to take my knife and follow the angle of the onion right when we get to this point, drop it and then finish my dice.

I always find this to be a little safer. I don't particularly like cutting towards myself according to the culinary school method and it usually just crumbles along its natural separations for medium dice. It's the same method, we're just going to cut it bigger. To make it too small we're just going to make our cuts larger and of course I'm using my method here. I'm going to use this for things where I want to see the onions, they're not going to melt. the small dice there will be some chunks of onion again, type soups, stews and things like that, let's get into the finely chopped onions and this will really make you cry.

The cutting is very similar to small dice, except I'm going to go very close together here again, a sharp knife really helps with this right and then we go in there and get as close as humanly possible without cutting my fingers and if it's not small enough for you, then you put your knife here and move around and you'll get your delicious thin cut. I'm not crying because I'm wearing my contact lenses. Is anyone else on the team crying? Let me keep cutting, we'll see, we'll get there. Finely chopped onions that you can use as a garnish.

If you've ever seen caviar service, they always have some finely chopped onion for that and if you're not so fancy you can cook it and use it in fillings, they just disappear. Is anyone feeling this now? To get results like this, you can also use a food processor or you can go online and get one of these devices. Look, it has all the pieces. Let's try. I'm going to take half an onion. We fit it there. Are we ready for this glimpse? That worked a lot better than I thought. I'm not normally a gadget guy, but I'm pretty impressed.

That's for dicing. Let's move on to qualify. This is a box grater if not. You don't have to go out and pick one up. Every home needs to have one of these. You have fine grinding, coarse grinding, grating and then slicing. Slicing is a bit useless, just use a knife, but all the other sides are great. I'm usually grating onions. for maybe something like meatloaf and meatballs, but especially when I make potato pancakes, that's what you want to do, this is perfect for potato pancakes, if you grate them like this, I call it grandma's method, using a lot muscle groups and you get tired very quickly.

I have a different method. I bought a tray. I'm going to put my grater on its side and keep these two together, so instead of grating, I'm going to take the whole onion and push it to the right so I can use my body. weight I have a considerable body weight to use and you just push it is not only faster but more efficient I don't need to clean my board and I don't need to scrape all the grates on my board my fingers are nice from an upward angle treats a box grater like a knife look at this on the blunt scale this is definitely a 10 out of 10 this will make everyone cry open a window turn on the fan get out of the kitchen and if you eat this raw you will definitely never get kissed and there you have all the onion cutting techniques you will need in the kitchen.

Not only are these cuts great for onions, but you can also use them for all your vegetables in the kitchen. Not eating onions like apples is a bad idea.