Dicing an onion is easy, if you know how to do it correctly. Done incorrectly, this simple kitchen task can waste you a ton of time and leave you with nothing but bleary eyes and uneven pieces. Since diced onion is a common ingredient in recipes across the board, learning the proper way to dice an onion is well worth a few minutes.
If you want even pieces in the shortest amount of time, the most important thing you need to know is how to slice the onion in half correctly. The rest comes easy: cut strips in one direction, rotate the onion and dice perpendicular to your original cuts. Dicing an onion will never be the same.
First you can remove the root from both ends. To do so, simply stick a knife into the top of the onion at an angle, and turn the onion around the knife, like this:
Some people prefer to keep the root on, and grip onto it while dicing -- the choice is yours. Root on or off, you'll need to peel off the onion's skin, like this:
When you have removed the onion's skin, it's time to chop the onion in half. There's a right and wrong way to do this: make sure you follow the lines in the onion instead of cutting against them. Cut the onion in the same direction as the lines, like this:
Next, slice the onion from top to bottom (where the roots used to be) but don't slice it all the way. Leave a tiny space -- like a quarter of an inch -- at one end, so that your slices remain connected, like this:
Now rotate the slice onion 90 degrees and slice away, cutting against the prior strips to create tiny, even squares.
You'll be left with a perfectly minced onion with minimal cutting, minimal mess, and hopefully minimal crying. Once you try this simple, easy method for dicing an onion, you'll never look back.
Related
Before You Go
