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commodorifiedAbout 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.
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.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-04 07:54 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-04 08:04 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-04 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-05 04:00 am (UTC)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 . . .
no subject
Date: 2015-03-05 12:45 pm (UTC)