This Is the Most secure and Quickest Option to Cube an Onion, and Nearly No One Teaches It

Onions are one of many first issues any aspiring cook dinner ought to study to chop. Whether or not you’re dicing them into massive chunks for soups and shares or mincing them finely for sauces and dressings, chopping an onion is an important kitchen ability. Most individuals study the identical primary technique—however there’s a safer, simpler different that far fewer know.

Essentially the most extensively recognized technique for dicing an onion goes like this: Set a halved onion on a slicing board and first make a collection of downward cuts via the onion (however not via the basis finish). Then make a collection of perpendicular cuts in towards the basis finish whereas holding the knife blade’s flat facet parallel to the slicing board.

These horizontal cuts—the place the knife runs parallel to the slicing board—are, nicely…dicey. No one likes these cuts. It is awkward and dangerous, requiring you slide the blade slightly below and in the direction of your non-dominant hand that’s sitting on high to carry the onion steady. A slip of the hand on a slick onion can ship you looking for a band-aid.

Regardless of the problem and dangers, that’s the primary slicing method taught to most house cooks and cooks alike. As a substitute, I swear by an alternate technique that requires none of these parallel-to-the-cutting-board horizontal slices. I first noticed this technique years in the past throughout my very firstclass on the Culinary Institute of America. It wasn’t a part of the official knife-skills curriculum—simply an informal demo from my teacher, Chef James Jennings. However it caught. Even after years working in skilled kitchens, that is nonetheless my go-to technique: safer, quicker, and simply as exact.

When you’re dicing a number of onions directly, you don’t must continually reposition your knife hand for various slicing orientations. You’re all the time slicing the onion in the identical path: down in the direction of the slicing board. Whereas I on no account invented this slicing method, I’ve been preaching its gospel at any time when and wherever I can. I’ve transformed recipe builders and editors at different main meals publications to it (one in every of my former coworkers even made a viral social video concerning the technique!).

In any occasion, now I current the steps for you in order that you can also undertake a safer and extra environment friendly technique of slicing onions.

Step-by-Step: The Safer Onion Cube

Step 1. Halve the onion via the basis finish and peel it. Working with one half at a time, make a collection of evenly spaced vertical cuts from pole to pole (high to root), slicing down towards the slicing board however stopping simply earlier than the basis finish. Use a claw grip along with your non-dominant hand, letting your knuckles information the knife whereas your fingertips and thumb keep safely tucked away.

Step 2. Return and prolong the middle lower to divide the onion half into two even quarters.

Step 3. Flip quarters onto newly lower sides, then align quarters in order that vertical cuts are actually horizontal.

Step 4. Now make a second collection of evenly spaced pole-to-pole cuts down in the direction of the slicing board; as soon as once more you should definitely maintain the basis finish connected.

Step 5. End by making a collection of evenly spaced vertical cuts perpendicular to the earlier ones, as soon as once more utilizing the knuckles in your non-dominant hand to information the final set of knife strokes. You must have diced onion items. 

Step 6. Repeat with the remaining onion half.