The first step to great food is great knife skills. Check out more Knife Skills this way! In the mood for some chili? You're gonna need three cups of onion, medium dice. Two onions, large chunks, please. And what about onion soup? Yes, believe it or not, you'll need onions for that too. No matter how you slice 'em, onions are used in a good 30 to 40 percent of any cook's savory dish repertoire, if not more. They are the first thing you should learn how to cut when you pick up a knife, and, at least for me, are still one of the most pleasurable foods to take a sharp blade to. In this guide, we'll go step-by-step through all of the basic onion cuts, as well as talking about the differences between various flavors of onions. Quick tip: if you're working with a large volume of onions, to maximize efficiency, work by taking every onion through one step before proceeding to the next step. In other words, peel all of your onions before you start making horizontal slices on any of them.

Similarly, make all of your horizontal cuts before making your vertical cuts. It will keep your work space more organized, require less trips to the garbage can (or compose can), and will make you look like a pro.Pitbull Puppies For Sale Chicago Il What color onion should you be using? Maine Coon Kitten 14 WeeksFor the most part, onions can be interchanged without overly catastrophic consequences (unless you consider red onions on a slider to be a catastrophe). I Love Cilantro T ShirtBut some onions are better suited for certain tasks than others. The size of the onion has little bearing on flavor, though I prefer larger onions, only because it means I have to peel fewer of them to get the same volume of prepped onions. No matter what onions you choose, make sure that they are firm to the touch when buying them.

If they give even a little bit—particularly at the root or stem end—there's a good chance some of the interior layers may have begun to rot. Store onions in a cool, dry, dark place. I keep mine inside a Chinese bamboo steamer, or sometimes hidden under my wife's side of the mattress if she's been getting on my nerves. Now let's get down to business. Peel off the outer papery layers of skin by rubbing the onion firmly between your fingers until only the inner, tightly packed layers of skin remain. Peeling this tough papery layer off will help prevent your knife from slipping later on down the line. Hold the onion steady with your non-knife and trim off the stem end by about 1/2-inch. Lay the onion flat on its cut surface and slice it in half, using your non-knife hand to hold it steady. Peel off the remaining skin. The first pale layer underneath the skin can often be dry and tough, so it's a good idea to remove the outermost layer as well to reveal the more tender flesh underneath.

Lay the onion flat and make a series of horizontal slices, holding the top of the onion steady with the tips of your fingers. Slice nearly all the way through, but keep the root end intact so that layers remain connected. Keeping the onion close to the edge of the board in order to give your knife hand clearance will facilitate this process. Make a series of vertical cuts with the same spacing as your horizontal cuts, again keeping the root end intact. To hold the onion, curl back the tips of the fingers on your non-knife hand, keeping your thumb behind them in order to prevent accidentally cutting your fingertips or thumb. Hold the knife blade directly against your knuckles to guide your strokes. Once you get close to the edge of the onion, use your non-knife hand to hold the onion steady by straddling it with your thumb and fingers. Finally, dice the onion by making a series of vertical cuts perpendicular to the ones you just made, again using the knuckles of your non-knife hand as a guide for the blade.

Do not use your knife blade to pick up chopped vegetables—rubbing it against the cutting board will quickly dull its edge. Instead, use a bench scraper custom-designed for the task. The spacing of your horizontal and vertical cuts determines the size of your final dice. For large dice, make cuts 3/4 to 1-inch apart. For medium, about 1/2-inch. For fine dice, make cuts 1/4-inch or smaller, and for brunoise, cut as finely as possible—a very sharp knife and a steady hand should have no problem with 1/8th-inch or even 1/16th-inch cuts. To cut onion rings or half rings, simply peel the onion as for dicing, then cut parallel to the equator, using your knuckles as a guide. This cut is rarely used for cooking purposes, as an onion sliced parallel to the equator displays an undesirable wormy quality after cooking. For cooking applications, it's better to slice perpendicular to the equator. After trimming off the stem end and halving the onion, start by trimming 1/2 an inch off of the root end as well, then peeling off the outer layers.

Make a series of slices perpendicular to the equator of the onion (pole-to-pole), once again using the knuckles of your non-knife hand as a guide. Continue slicing the entire onion. This is the cut you should use when a recipe calls for sliced onions. Onion slices cut pole to pole will break down more completely as they cook, producing a more uniform texture and flavor in the finished dish. Onions sliced pole-to-pole (left) and onions sliced parallel to the equator. About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook. A definitive method of dicing an onion Do I first cut it in half or do I make crosswise incisions before chopping it? And what is the best knife to use? marked as duplicate by Bob, stephennmcdonald, hobodave This question has been asked before and already has an answer.

If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question. I use two different knives when I dice an onion. First, cut the onion in half, through the root end (so that each half has a bit of the root on it to hold it together). Next, take a paring knife (the skinny blade is why I use this knife here) and make vertical cuts that go almost all the way to the root. Next, use the paring knife to make horizontal cuts while using one hand to hold the onion in place. Last, use a chef's knife to make downward cuts to finish the dice. If you are trying to julienne cut the onion, cut off both the top and root part of the onion and peel it. Then chop the onion in half vertically and cut thin slices of onion on an angle from the outside toward the middle (about a 10 degree angle should be fine). I do all of this with a chef's knife. I'm sure there must be videos on youtube in regards to this, but here it is in a nutshell. Cut the ends off of the onion. Cut it in half from the root to the tip.