How to dice an onion without crying your eyes out

September 15, 2017 4:57 PM

We enlisted the professional help of Emily Hankey, Whole Foods Market Produce Butcher, to show us how to dice an onion without crying.

Onions are in basically everything. From chilis to pasta sauces to salads and burgers, its an ingredient that is pretty essential to know how to deal with.

But cutting onions can get tricky, fast. The dozens of layers can be tough to work with, they're annoying to peel, and yeah, there's the whole crying thing. What's an amateur chef to do?

We enlisted the professional help of Emily Hankey, Whole Foods Market Produce Butcher, to show us how to dice an onion without crying (or, you know, cutting yourself):

1. Cut off the top and bottom of the onion (Emily is using a seven-inch Santoku knife).

2. Peel off the outer layer of the onion—just use your hands!

3. Cut the onion in half vertically and lay it flat on your cutting board.

4. Press down on top of the onion to keep it steady and use your knife to slice across. Do not slice all the way through—Hankey says to leave enough uncut for you to hold while dicing.

5. Repeat a few times depending on the size of the onion so that you have a few slices through the onion.

6. Cut straight down to make a series of vertical cuts over what you just cut through the onion.

7. Rotate your onion 90 degrees and slice straight down, dicing into cubes.

Hankey's biggest tip? "The sharper your knife, the less tears," she says. You could also wear glasses while cutting to prevent any This Is Us-level weeping while chopping up your onion.

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