Peel and chop, peel and chop..
The humble onion, bringing mankind to tears since it’s existence. Possibly one of my favourite, or at least most commonly used ingredients.
There is so much you can do with an onion, as i’ll show in later recipe posts, and knowing how to cut an onion properly can save a lot of time and stress. I would say on average i probably peel, slice,dice and cut up around 10-15 onions a day; for the last 15 years (!) so i guess i’ve got a bit of experience when it comes to prepping and advice on how to cut an onion properly.
How to cut an onion
I find that far too often i’ve been asked how to cut an onion, or i’ve witnessed someone trying to cut an onion when they clearly have no idea how to cut an onion (it can be quite painful to watch but then if you’ve never been taught, you don’t know!) so here is a complete guide on how to cut an onion.
It goes without saying that a nice sharp knife is a big advantage when figuring out how to cut an onion (check this post on how to keep your knives in good check). Always WTF! (Watch Those Fingers!) because its not fun when you bleed on everything for 2 and a half hours.
When it comes to onions remember the skins go nicely in a stock (if you’ve got one on the go) so just chuck them in the stockpot rather than the bin. In terms of prep there’s 5 (or 6) basic ways to prepare and cut an onion.
These consist of;
- Slicing (lengthways)
- Slicing (the other way) -check terminology?
- Dicing and fine dicing
- Rings
- Mincing
I’ll go into each one separately.
But first things first, you need to remove the aforementioned skin (stock it!) to get to the fleshy, oniony goodness.
How to peel an onion
How to peel an onion? There are 2 ways (that i know of) that work best, one for when you need to use the onion straight away, and one for when you want the onion kept whole but with no skin (i.e for service or an event/party etc.).
When storing onion that are not cut up but have been peeled be sure to keep them in the fridge.
If you’ve heard or read anywhere than keeping sliced/diced/cut up onion in the fridge is dangerous then i can tell you now that i’ve been doing it my entire cooking career, and have been taught to do it by others, though it only lasts around 3 days i have never experienced any kind of problem (health or otherwise) storing cut up onion in the fridge, just keep it in an air tight container.
It can save you a lot of time (or what seems like a lot) if you just prep all your onion at onces (i.e a 2.5kg bag from the supermarket), thought just remember if you want to pre slice it to not do too much due to the shelf life.
Buying pre prepared vegetables, especially onions from supermarkets is more of a waste of your money than you think, to put it into perspective a bit, 1kg of sliced red onions from tesco comes in at £5.56/kg! You can get frozen sliced red onion at £2/kg but come on, frozen raw onions? We want nutrients from our food! Anyway to compare with the alternative, fresh, crisp, flavoursome red onions they cost a grand total of £1/kg.
I don’t know about you, but if you either look in the long term, or in terms of scaling up it’s a gigantic saving, for what is quite honestly 5 minutes work, possibly 10 if that.
Apologies for the rambling i just hate so see money wasted, especially on food. Eating well really doesn’t have to be expensive if you know how to get the most from your ingredients which i will (hopefully) help you realise!
On to the actual point i was trying to make, to peel an onion you need;
- A knife, or something sharp
- A chopping board, preferably not the floor
You can just do it with your hands, but assuming you want to slice or dice it after them i’m afraid they won’t work for that, and we have knives for a reason.
Recipes and Stuff 