Tip of the Day # 130: Dicing Onions Properly

 How to Properly Dice an Onion--and quickly!!!

Many people have a problem when it comes to properly dicing or cutting certain vegetables, and the following technique will assist you in cutting veggies, such as an onion, more efficiently!
This tutorial may seem lengthy, but when completely in reality, you will be able to cut like a pro!

1. Get your onion. Peel it, and trim the root end flush but don’t carve it out. The stem will help hold the onion layers together as you cut.

2. Cut your onion in half. We’ll dice one-half at a time. Note the stem, still holding together most of the onion layers.

3.  We’re going to cut radial slices around the onion half without cutting through the stem. Picture the spokes of a bicycle tire. Now picture it’s just half a tire, with all the spokes radiating outward from the center. If you can imagine cutting along imaginary spokes as you slice your onion, this technique will be a cinch.

The first cut will be at a very shallow angle.

4.  The next will be slightly less shallow as you slice your way towards the top of the onion.

5.   Remember not to to cut through the stem – stop your slices 1/2-inch or so shy of the root end.

6.  By the time you are slicing down through the center (apex) of the onion, your knife should be vertical.

7.  Slice your way down the other side of the onion, making increasingly shallow cuts as you approach the cutting board on the other side.

8.  Now, turn your onion 90-degrees so that you can hold the root end firmly in your left (or non-knife) hand while slicing down and perpendicular to the radial slices you just made.

9.  As you slice down, tidy little diced onion pieces will fall from your knife.
The onion will try to splay apart as you cut down. You have to use your non-knife hand to hold the onion together. My thumb and fingers spread out a bit down the sides of the onion to hold all the layers together.