How Tao Cuts an Onion

I’ve seen people struggle with cutting onions before. I don’t claim to be the best or anything, but if you are interested, please read further on how I cut my onions…

1. Cut the onion in half, from tip to base, as shown below:

2. Cut out the base, turn it around, then cut out the tip (or visa-versa). The goal is to remove the tough portions of the onion. Obviously the extreme tips are not too appetizing, but I also end up removing a little “meat” near these endpoints. The layers of the onion near the tips get thin and turn into tough bits that I can’t chew after cooking, so I cut out lil’ wedge looking sections.

3. Peel off a complete outer layer. Sometimes the outer-most layer will be some skimpy thing that is mostly skin…that doesn’t count. Keep removing layers until you take off the first layer that has meat everywhere. I know, technically a layer of the onion gets wasted, but I picked up this habit from experience. It’s a real bummer if you leave on a layer that has some skin-thin parts because they are basically un-chewable and tedious to pick out after cutting.

4. Next I lay the half onion, flat-side down and cut strips from tip to tip.

Notice that the direction of the cuts are not straight up-down, but rather radiate from the center. This is so the final pieces will be more uniform and you are not left with thicker pieces of onion near the sides.

Sometimes this is as far as you want to cut an onion, depending on the recipe. If you need to dice, there is one more step.

5. Cut perpendicular to cuts made in step 4, as shown below (and yes, I like my big cleaver):

Optional: Cry that it’s over.