How To: Chop Onions

Onions make me teary-eyed, so I try to get the entire chopping experience over as quickly as I can. However, I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so I like the resulting onion pieces to be as uniform in size as possible. What to do? I went to a knife skills class a little over a year ago where they showed me this technique.

1. After removing the outer skin, cut the top and bottom off of your onion.

2. Place one of the flat ends down, and cut the onion in half.

3. With the new flat side down, start cutting 1/4" from one flat edge to the other. You basically want to cut from the outside of the onion to the center of the onion, so your cuts won't be straight up and down. Notice that my first slice shown here is almost horizontal.

4. Work your way radially across the onion. See the sketch below and the following photos for visuals...

I'm an onion. Cut me like this...      .

5. Now you want to cut perpendicular to the cuts you just made.

Notice how I'm holding the onion, with my thumb on one side and my pinkie on the other. This helps maintain the shape of the onion while you cut.

And here's your final product.