Inspired by a truly awesome Captain Awkward post

[commodorified]

About living with an Optimiser without losing your mind.

Said thread having left me with an irresistible urge to tell people how I think onions are best cut. As this is high on the list of Worst Things I Could Do over there - quite right, too - I have come back here to do it.

So, these are My Opinions:

0) Dried onions and frozen onions - which in Canada can be bought in large bags at M&M Meats, among other places - are terribly under-appreciated.

1) Always use your very sharpest non-serrated blade. The onion juice that makes you cry is released by crushing the flesh of the onion, so the more you minimise this the less irritant is released.

2) Putting the onion in the fridge for an hour -or the freezer for ten minutes, but don't forget about it - before you cut it does, actually, help.

3) Keeping your mouth tightly shut from the moment you cut into the onion until you walk away from the cutting board helps a lot, but if you once open your mouth it stops working. I do not know why this is so.

4) Cut the ends off first, so that you have flat spots to stand the onion on rather than it being able to roll around. This may save your fingers if you do get teary-eyed.

5) When you put them into the pan to cook, starting them off on low and increasing the heat in stages will minimise the amount of onion juice that gets into the air to irritate your eyes.

6) If you do end up with streaming eyes, rinse out your mouth and nostrils, not your eyes. Putting a cool washcloth over your eyes is soothing and gets your lashes clean, but your eyes are already cleaning themselves.

7) Food processors are not, in my opinion, suitable for chopping onions due to an excess of crushing activity and subsequent fumes.

Please share your opinions about onions freely - with impeccable courtesy and bountiful goodwill - in the comments. Anonymous commenting is on (on DW) but screened, please do sign your anonymous comment in some fashion; initials, nicknames, etc. are just fine, I just want to be able to tell y'all apart.

n.b. Rice Cookers may also be discussed.

Comments

[tim]

(8) If you happen to have a scuba mask, wear it.

[recessional]

I have a system so automatic and flexible for dealing with Optimisers that I barely notice I'm doing it, due to Dad having been one my whole life.

Responses include evaluating the suggestion and taking it on board because it's good and/or because they are in a leadership position and it's not a big deal to change so whatever, through saying "you actually have no idea what you're talking about, allow me to explain" and then through " . . . *Looks at Optimiser* *does the thing in OWN WAY AGAIN, only MORE EMPHATICALLY*" and finally "if you want to be in charge of how this gets done you do it and I'll go play Candy Crush."

Plus others. (Including now that I think about it the rather more diplomatic "sure that's A Way to do it but I'm used to doing it this other way so I'm going to keep doing it this way because I'm so used to it and it'll get done faster this way; I'll think about the advantages of Your Way later.")

Because while my father actually does try to change often, he is sixty and very ASD and it is literally harder for him to change than for me to say "do YOU want to load the dishwasher? Then shush."

[alexbayleaf]

In my infallible opinion, the correct way to dice onions is:

1. cut off top and bottom
2. stand on one end, then cut in half
3. remove outer layer and freeze, along with the tops and bottoms, for future stockmaking
4. lay your onion halves, one at a time, flat side down on the board
5. cut into wedges top-to-bottom (4-12 depending on fineness of dice)
6. turn 90 degrees and cut perpendicularly (width according to fineness of dice)

[mdlbear]

Was just about this to say something like this, only I leave the bottom on so that the wedges stay attached at one end. Works because most of the cut surfaces are covered, up until the last step.

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed!

[nenya_kanadka]

What I'm getting out of this is that you occasionally attend FFA with the rest of us nonnies?

[commodorified]

Nope; I avoid them.

[nenya_kanadka]

Onion-chopping wank must be even bigger than I thought! :P

(They're a chaotic but often entertaining and good-hearted lot, I find, but not everyone feels the same.)

[recessional]

Onion chopping wank predates the internet.

It may predate everything except the domestication of onions concentrated enough to cause tears when chopped.

[legionseagle]

Historical fiction boards of course have wank about whether a character eating onions at a particular date can possibly be accurate.*


*And don't even go there with tomatoes.

[clanwilliam]

What about potatoes?

[legionseagle]

There's always one...

ETA Actually, the take up of tomatoes was much, much slower than that of potatoes. There are only four recipes for tomatoes in the whole of Mrs Beeton's Household Management (published 1860 or thereabouts).

[commodorified]

... i asked for it.

[staranise]

IIRC, in Tudor England tomatoes were viewed as "possibly poisonous" and therefore Not Very Good Ideas.

[legionseagle]

As they're part of the deadly nightshade family and bear some superficial similarities, I'm not surprised.

[graydon]

I'm suffering a certain bafflement that there's a meaningful sharpness differential to consider...

I generally go with Skud's methodology, minus the stock-storing (I'm cooking for one) and with keeping the onions in the fridge as a regular thing.

The wooden-bowl-and-under-water approach (there are places you can get ulu knives still) isn't something I've ever tried. I have run ten-something pounds of onions through a food processor; I cannot recommend the practice.

[commodorified]

I should probably mention that I keep a very cheap, very blunt knife especially for people who start in with knife-snobbery threads in my comments...


ETA: Which, if I am being excessively harsh I apologise, but just for starters, I was in my 30s before I owned more than one kitchen knife which I had selected and bought myself, new, of a high enough quality to keep a decent edge, because I was in my 30s before spending more than ten bucks on a kitchen knife was an option, never mind a priority. I have reason to believe that I am not alone in this. Many, many people make excellent meals with very basic or even completely shit kitchen equipment, and I was one of them for long enough that a statement like yours makes me hackle.

[graydon]

You specified non-serrated.

Cheap knives usually unmaintainable -- "stainless steel" that's more nickel than steel, electrically hardened edges too brittle to abrade, and so on -- and frequently serrated, and there's no reason to not use the serrated versions on onions. (And some reason to do so if that's the sharpest knife you've got.) The since-about-1990 cheap knife is a metallurgical marvel, and they certainly work, but they're also pretty much impossible to maintain.

So if you're talking about "very sharpest non-serrated" I'm immediately thinking that these are maintainable knives of at least moderate quality, and then I'm wondering why you'd maintain cooking knives to different degrees of sharpness. That seems like an odd thing to do.

[commodorified]

As I said, I find serrated, however sharp, produces far more tearing.

It's not a matter of deliberately maintaining different levels, but of many people owning one or two good knives and some mediocre ones.

[recessional]

Or all mediocre ones of different ages, so the newest ones are sharpest, which is what I used to have until I talked my mother into really believing that I wanted nice kitchen knives for Giftmas.

[staranise]

I resemble that description so hard. *sob*

[graydon]

It might be of general interest to consider either the Lee Valley "Peasant Chef's Knife" (19th century multi-purpose cook's knife design, 40 CAD, high carbon blade so yeah it will rust but it's a good high carbon blade, plus there's the aluminium foil trick) or vulching Grohmann's clearance page,

http://www.grohmannknives.com/pages/clearance.html

for the half-off-because-there-are-handle-chips possibilities?

Really nice knives are totally painfully expensive. Really functional knives aren't always.

(Grohmann's Canadian, and makes really splendid knives. So of course no one's heard of them...)

[alexbayleaf]

I'm cooking for one too. One person needs less stock than many, but generates less stock-making scraps, as well, so it all works out.

[graydon]

I have the habit of buying substantial cuts of beef and baking them over water, so I wind up with, if not stock, lots of stuff to cook rice in, generally more than I actually want to eat rice. (Throwing the root vegetables in there for baking purposes, or finely cubed potatoes and rice, works pretty well, too.)

Actual, proper stock, rather than the chopped-onion-under-the-cow, I can start with that, approach, is pretty rare for me.

[redbird]

Running a trickle of cool water in a sink near where you are cutting onions also reduces tears.

So does ventilation: in my current apartment, I turn the over-the-stove vent fan on when cutting onions.

I also try to allow enough time that, if necessary, I can put the knife down, rinse my hands in cool water, and give the air a couple of minutes to clear before continuing.

[matgb]

ventilation: in my current apartment, I turn the over-the-stove vent fan on when cutting onions.

This, having a good extractor fan and opening the window/door is pretty much essential for me.

[par_avion]

Burning a candle helps!

I probably never cut an onion the same way twice, and I use different knives depending on what is convenient, but I light a non-scented tealight near the cutting board.

Lifehacker disagrees with me, but I find it helps. I'm (usually) only mildly affected by onions though, so I guess I'm not asking too much of the candle. We also use a lot of Vidalia onions, which are less tear-inducing.

[legionseagle]

Actually, I very rarely cry when chopping onions, which may be associated with wearing contact lenses or something about the type of onions on sale locally or is just a peculiarity of my genetic makeup. So my method is grab onion, grab chopping board, grab knife, go for it*.

But it occurred to me that this ties into the LW's frustration with people giving Optimising tips to avoid problems they didn't in fact have, or, in the case of me and my partner, giving Optimising tips which may tackle apparent inefficiency A but only at the cost of destroying solution B, which the technique which produced inefficiency A was also intended to achieve; in my case, I know I've got a tendency to forgetfulness with respect to providing in advance objects which may be needed later. So if, for example, I need to remind myself to take something like a phone charger to work, I'm going to put it by the front door, which is the place my mental routine tells me to check as the final act before shutting the door. But either my partner's tidying the hall or interrupting the final order of departure by something which breaks the routine (such as asking me unexpectedly to take the recycling out at the last minute)is likely to lead to exactly the problem that putting the thing by the front door was intended to avoid.

So I could imagine endless fun and games if you had Optimiser with Onion Sensivity versus Slob who regarded onion sensitivity as a vaguely mythical condition, useful for cartoon jokes.



*My mother, incidentally, was absolutely convinced that onions generated toxic chemicals if you left them part cut in the fridge. Any onion optimising solution which proposed any form of delay would have led to accusations of attempted murder.

[coughingbear]

I think contact lenses can make a huge difference - on the rare occasions I've chopped an onion while wearing my glasses, I have had a much stronger reaction.

I do try (these days) to ask if there's a reason something is where it is before I helpfully tidy it away. Often there is.

[ursula]

Yeah, contact lenses are magic! Though I have very dry eyes, and actually kind of appreciate onion tears.

[recessional]

. . . don't they hurt for you?

As I don't really care that much about the TEARS, but the tears seem to come from the stabbing pain in my eyes when I chop onions . . .

[ursula]

No, I didn't even know that onion PAIN was a thing.

[dreamwaffles]

If I need to chop a lot of onion quickly, I do it thus:

1) hone my kitchen knife*
2) peel off outer skin, chop onion in half lengthwise, and set the cut side down to brace
3) cut off stem end
4) cut alllllmost all the way to the root end horizontally parallel to the board, pinning my onion with my hand flat on the curved top
5) cut allllmost all the way to the root end vertically through the onion (perpendicular to step 4) very, very carefully
6) chop away normally and VOILÀ THEY ARE DICED REAL QUICK

*I have a LOT of opinions about kitchen knives. My very very favorite is my 8" Victorinox Chef's Knife, which is the top-rated stainless steel blade from America's Test Kitchen for the past 5 years or so. I also have some decent-quality 6" knives and paring knives.

tl;dr about knives though, source Professional Knife Guy at My Local Kitchen Store: Good-quality knives don't need to be sharpened that often to hold an edge, once every 2-3 years is enough. Invest in a good-quality *honing steel* (mine was like $30 but I live in Hawaii and everything is super expensive) and hone your knives regularly so your knives keep a keen edge. I hone mine every 3-4 uses. Professional chefs hone theirs a bit obsessively.

(honing steels are the cylindrical things with handles that people go *shhhk shhhhk* with the carving knife right before they carve a turkey. There's good youtube videos about it.)

[graydon]

I might advocate for stropping over honing, since it's easier to learn, plausibly practical with less-than-ideal wrists, and moves less steel off the knife, so one can sensibly strop before each use.

More of a wood-worker thing than a cook thing, so far as I can tell, the only other people I know who strop their knives are people I've bought strops for over the years.

[dreamwaffles]

oooh, neat! I have no idea how to strop a knife though.

My honing steel isn't much heavier than my big knives, but it does need some wrist flexibility at least to keep the right angle on the knife.

*chinhands* I'm happy for you to tell me more?.... :D

[graydon]

The idea behind a strop is that if you take a heavy leather strap, leather has some very fine silica particles in it naturally, and thus if you stroke the edge along the strop, always away from the edge so you don't cut the leather, you get a very fine sharpening effect. The traditional thing to do with straight razors and other really fine edges.

This works dandy for razors where you can hold the strop taught with one hand and strop the razor with the other.

It doesn't work so well for generic edge tools, and there you get either very stiff short chunks of leather for carving tools, leather belts for belt sanders, or sticking the leather on a wooden back, so it's got a stiff support. (Lee Valley sells these; "leather hand strop".)

If you've got the hand strop, you can put honing compound on it -- hello, utterly consistent nomenclature associated with hand tools, why, of course it is, it's not fractal at all! -- to (modernly, greatly) enhance the effect; this is usually chromium dioxide with particle size around a micron in some sort of binder. (Usually beef tallow in the binder so possibly an issue for vegetarians.)

The motion is like slicing with the knife, only rotated ninety degrees minus whatever edge angle the knife has, so you're drawing back, away from the edge, and from handle to tip on the knife at the same time, very similar the motion for using a knife steel. It's slower and requires less force than a steel because there's less material being affected on the knife. (Steels half swage the edge; ideal for the blades of knives in the 19th century, less ideal for modern high-carbon stainless with vanadium in it, which is a much stronger material.) Because the hand strop is a wood block with a side rather than a tangent, you could at need clamp it into something so you had both hands for the knife, and even regularly you can either brace it against something solid or hold it flat in your hand. (This is all much easier to demonstrate than describe...)

The essential differences for the edge are the very fine particle size associated with stropping -- you can get things sharper than commercial razor blades this way, the electron photomicrographs have been taken -- and the slight gooshyness of the leather. Because the leather's indenting under the pressure of the side of the blade, it curls up a bit across the edge, so the very edge is less fine than the sharpening angle would require, and thus stronger, while being just as keen and even (fineness -- angle of the wedge; keenness -- how wide is the very edge of the cutting edge?; evenness -- how consistent is the keenness? what are its error bars? for most kitchen tasks, we want a fine edge very keen and even. For chopping wood, we want a robust edge, not so keen that it turns, and so on. No, this isn't globally consistent terminology but one has to start somewhere. :) How much force you strop with controls how much the leather indents and thus how much curl you get over the edge and how strong the effect is on the form of the edge.

Because the loss of metal is slight -- you can see it turning the green honing compound black, but you're just not taking much off -- it's entirely practical to pick a knife out of the block, take three passes each side on the strop, and set to one's onions or whichever every time you've got something to cut in the kitchen. I've got some knives, high-carbon steel ones, not the harder stainless of the modern age, these eighteen years now and used like this and not showing noticeable wear to the edge of the blade. (Never been actually sharpened on a stone, either.) The harder stainless of the modern age (yay! Grohmann) I haven't had as long but it responds really well and shows even less wear.

(Everyone knows that when you put knives in the dishwasher, it's hot enough and caustic enough in there to damage a really keen edge, even if the edge somehow avoids being banged against something by the force of the whirling water, and that you're making a tradeoff between two conveniences when you do it? Yes, it makes me twitch to see cooking knives go in dishwashers.)

I hope that's useful and comprehensible, it's much more a do subject than a words subject. (Or at least I find it so.)

[james_g4clf]

The Victorinox small paring knives are great too - stainless, but can be kept sharp with a steel (and have dishwasher safe handles).

[dreamwaffles]

My mom has two of them, I've been hinting about them for Christmas or birthday gifts for a while. The paring knife I have is one of those ones with a bright-colored blade and it seems to be holding its edge just fine without much honing, which is nice because I want it to keep its pretty colors....

[james_g4clf]

Nice thing about these Victorinox blades (see post on knives in dishwashers above) is that Victorinox use a variety of stainless steel which [A] holds an edge; [B] refreshes with a steel (note, says the irritating pedant, that a honing steel does not actually hone knives, but simply realigns the metal along the edge - everyday English is at odds with the actual physical process); and [C] keeps its edge in a dishwasher if it's put somewhere where the cutting edges do not bang against other stuff during the wash. It's a long time to your birthday - so there's one in to post to you from my stash of "Victorinox paring knives for giving away" which I get my sister in Switzerland to replenish for me from time to time when they appear in a supermarket clearance sale.

[fajrdrako]

I never even thought of this as an issue. If onions need chopping, I chop them. Luckily no one around me tells me how to do it. I tend to avoid people who tell me what they think I should do - much to their chagrin. I don't bother explaining.

[mmegaera]

This in spades. Especially that last sentence [g]. But then that's because I grew up as a youngest and also had the ill fate to marry two optimizers.

[aella_irene]

I picked up a new method after the third time or so Housemate went by while I was chopping onions, and said "but doing them X way is much more efficient, see!" And I suppose that it is. (Cut onion in half. Peel back skin. Cut most of the way to the root, then turn ninety degrees, and cut in rows, leaving the bit that makes you cry until last.)

Ginger and garlic, though, go into the whirry chopper, because there is no way I can cut them fine enough that someone isn't going to end up chomping a chunk of ginger root.

[redbird]

I mostly don't mind chomping a chunk of ginger root; when I want it really fine, I use a packaged ginger paste (I used to have to get this in an Indian grocery, but in the last few years it's turning up in produce sections of not-ethnically-marked supermarkets). When I want small bits of garlic, I use a garlic press.

[staranise]

Wait, which is the bit that makes you cry?

[tiamatschild]

Onion ends do not belong in garbage disposals installed in sinks!

This message brought to you by someone who didn't know that trying it in my kitchen recently.

Wasn't fun.

[james_g4clf]

Leeks are MUCH worse.

At my old house (no garbage disposer in new one - we compost it) we had the "unblock ten meters of slow falling waste pipe" thing every time a visitor helped prepare a leek and we didn't notice and stop 'em using the garbage grinder - and nothing else gave any trouble.

[krait]

My opinions about onions can be summarised quickly:

1. Frozen pre-chopped onions are the only form of fresh onions I need in my kitchen.

2. Use them in the (rare) instances where onion powder isn't an option.

(Actually, I think my opinion on onions can be summarised even more succinctly as, But why would you even want onions when both garlic and shallots exist?)

[malka]

I am one of those folks strongly and erratically affected by onions. It can go from mildly annoying to pain and almost no vision without warning. This makes it likely that I'm going to have trouble if I'm chopping a lot of onions, so I make sure I know what my exit strategy is. This is particularly useful in a crowded pre-group-dinner kitchen. I try to know both where I can safely put the knife and how I can safely get to clear air without encountering other people's knives / ovens / etc, all without much sight or attention.

I also do my best to keep strict face-hand discipline. If my cheek or eyebrow itches in a way that can't be scratched on my shoulder, it needs to wait until my hands have been washed.