How To: Dice an Onion Like a Pro

Do you ever watch cooking competition shows like Top Chef, Chopped, and Iron Chef and get really jealous of their ninja-like knife skills? I DO! The chefs on these shows move their knives with such precision and speed, creating uniform cuts of various ingredients, it seems they could dice a pound of potatoes blind-folded! I feel better about my tortoise-like-by-comparison knife skills when I think of the many hours of repetitive movement, hand cramping, and boxes of band-aids the chefs had to endure before reaching the skill level we see on TV. However, I do have some insider knowledge of how cooks and chefs chop so perfectly and I'm going to share them with you!

We will start with onions. I have a love/hate relationship with onions. I love eating onions: French onion soup, pearl onions in a stew, caramelized onions on a flatbread pizza, all of it is delicious! But I hate cutting them. I dread cutting them. I've tried holding a matchstick between my teeth, wearing glasses, all of the old wives' tales that supposedly keep you from crying your eyes out. They don't work. In the end, I've found it best to fight through the tears and eagerly await the final product. It's always worth it in the end!

Now, the lesson! Remember what I said earlier, no chef began chopping onions at lightening speed. It took years of practice and undoubtedly a few cuts to their fingers along the way. Practice makes perfect, so be patient with yourself.

First, some onion anatomy. An onion has two ends; the hairy root end and the pointy grow end.

Remove the outer paper-thin layers.

Cut the onion in half through the root end. You should have some of the hairy root end on both halves of your onion. This is very important! The root will hold the onion together while you make the various cuts.

Place the onion flat-side down on your cutting board. Pressing firmly on the top of the onion with your free hand, make 3-4 horizontal cuts across, but not completely through, the onion. 

Rotate the onion one quarter turn toward you so the root end is facing away from you. Make 3-4 vertical cuts perpendicular to the cutting board all the way through the onion.

At this point, your onion should look like this with horizontal and vertical cuts. Now, prepare to feel like a Top Chef!

Rotate your onion one quarter turn away from you. Keeping your fingers out of the way, make vertical cuts through your onion. Start at the grow end and work your way toward the root end. Watch as the diced onion pieces fall uniformly onto your cutting board!

Now, sometimes you will want a large dice and other times you'll need to finely dice your onion. The more horizontal and vertical cuts you make, the smaller the pieces in the final product. This method is faster (less exposure to the onion=less crying!), creates a more uniform cut (no struggling with smaller pieces burning while larger pieces need more time to cook), and makes you feel like a professional (move over Bobby Flay!)

Knife Skills: Chopping, Fanning, & Mincing

It is said in kitchens, your #1 tool is your hands followed by your #2 tool, your chef's knife. I feel that this rating system is extremely unfair to my long-suffering Kitchen-Aid mixer, but I still believe it is important for every cook to have a basic knowledge of knife skills. This way, when you run into a recipe with an ingredient that says 2 tsp. minced, or 1/4 cup chopped, you'll know just what to do!

Chopping is a rough cut that simply means to break into smaller pieces. To chop things for baking, chocolate chips, dried fruit, candies, etc, I resort to the fanning method.

To begin, gather the item to be chopped on a cutting board. Keeping one hand on the knife handle and the other on the top of the knife point, raise up and cut down repeatedly. This is before position (A)....

and this is the after position (B). Repeat positions (A) and (B) sweeping knife in a fan shape from left to right across the chips, fruit, candies, etc.  Fanning. No problem right? Now onto mincing.


Mincing is a very small cut made by slicing the item into julienne strips then further slicing the julienne strips into small minced squares. The minced item is this demo is crystallized ginger. Here we go!

Slice the ginger into small strips keeping your fingers OUT OF THE WAY. This cut is called a julienne. It creates spears or strips out of whatever you're slicing. Gather the julienne strips together, and turn the bunch 1/4 turn clockwise. 

Using your knuckles as a guide, slice repeatedly, creating tiny squares of ginger, until you have reached the edge of the julienne strips.

Now you have a bunch of tiny squares. If you need to make something smaller yet, simply fan your knife a few times through the minced squares.

 

It's always important to remember that your julienne cuts, minced cuts, etc do not need to be perfect. You're going to be mixing these into a batter and blasting that in the oven, so if your cuts are not identical, don't worry about it. If the recipe is delicious, your eaters will forgive you.