How to Cut an Onion 6 Different Ways

Cutting an onion is one of the very first things you learn in culinary school .

It's that fundamental .

It's that basic .

And plus I think it's one of those items that you prepare more than any other ingredient out there .

I'm gonna show you some foolproof ways to do it and give you the confidence to make sure your knife cuts are perfect when cutting an onion every single time when it comes to basic preparation of food .

This is probably the number one question I get .

How do you cut an onion like that ?

Mine never look like the way that you do it .

So I'm gonna show you from start to finish several different knife cuts .

But of course , those small dice , medium and large dice cuts , which are so basic in so many recipes .

We are gonna start there sound good .

Let's prep .

I'm going to kick this technique off with a huge bowl of red onions .

And really the only reason I chose red instead of yellow or white is that so you could easily see the cuts when I go in and down on them .

So let's first begin with a small dice of an onion .

We're gonna slice off the ends of the red onion .

Go ahead and turn it and lay it flat and then we're gonna slice down right in the middle .

We're next going to remove that outer peel .

It's really rough and hard to cut through .

So once it is removed , go ahead and set it back on the cutting board .

And here's what you wanna do .

Holding the knife by your fingertips , don't hold it on your palm , hold on your fingertips .

So if you slice through , you're going into air , not your hand or arm , starting at the bottom and working your way up every eighth of an inch .

If you can go a little bit smaller , fantastic .

Slice it all the way up with your hand with a knife and using your other hand to push down to hold the onion in place all the way to the top .

Now , what you wanna do is slice down onto the onion about an eighth inch from the next slice or again , if you can go thinner , fantastic , there will be a couple little onion pieces coming out .

No problem , no foul .

It's going to be totally fine .

Now you want to slice down onto those other slices that you did to make beautiful small dices just like this .

You'll essentially take it all the way to the end to the core of the onion or until you get a little nervous .

Then stop now , really quick .

One of the other questions that I get mostly from friends and family members is how do you not cry when cutting onions ?

And I wish there was a foolproof way to cut an onion without bawling .

So many times , my wife takes videos of me cutting onions because the tears are streaming down my face .

Now , the only thing I've ever found success when doing it because I worked at a country club one time and I would regularly dice up £50 bag of onions and the tears were always rolling down is that you do everything you can to focus around .

Only breathing out of your mouth .

Don't even let a hint of air go through your nose , all your mouth and you're gonna breathe heavy like a dog just , but if you do that , you might get away with leaving a few tiers behind and cutting an onion to prevent .

Here's what we do .

Now , for the medium onion , we are gonna go up on that half peeled slice every quarter of an inch all the way from the bottom to the top .

And then just like the small dice , we are gonna slice down every quarter of an inch instead of an eighth of an inch all the way through the onion from top to bottom .

And then again , what we wanna do is take another quarter inch slice all the way through to get these beautiful medium diced onions .

These look fantastic .

And for the large onion .

It's no different .

But instead we're gonna do every half inch from the bottom to the top .

The same applies when slicing down from top to bottom and then again , turn and slice it half inch thick .

And I always go till I say you get nervous or you're afraid you're gonna cut your hand , then you stop .

I cannot say this enough .

You have to have a very sharp knife .

If you don't know how to sharpen a knife , be sure to check out my videos about knives and what each of them are used for and how to sharpen it .

If you don't have a sharp knife , if you're holding your onion and you slice through and you're trying and you're pushing so hard and it goes right through .

Boom , you've cut your wrist , you've cut your hand , you have to be careful .

But if you have a sharp knife , this comes with ease , you can slice down and slice through so easily .

It's the best way to protect yourself .

Sharp knife is where it's at .

Now , if you wanted that stir fry sort of cut , slice it in half , turn it and then take angled cuts starting from the right to the left all the way through , this looks perfect and it gets you that excellent stir fry vegetable cut that you might get when you order out .

Now for the Julienne facing down on the onion , you want to start from right to left and kind of slice all the way over .

So at an angle , crunch in your fingertips and simply rock that knife back and forth while pinching the blade and slice down .

Here's a better angle for you .

You slice all the way down and then when you get to about half to three quarters of the way through , what I like to do is sort of turn the onion to make sure it's balanced and really stable on the cutting board and then apply the same technique .

I'm gonna go a little bit thicker here just because , well , that's what I want to do with this one .

And what's the age old saying ?

Practice makes perfect , right .

You have to practice , practice , practice cutting onions to the perfect size so that you can get it right .

You got a few more cuts to go .

Here we go another way to Julianne instead of slicing it .

The way that I did simply turn the onion out and slice down like this .

This is how we used to do it at a few of the restaurants I did .

It's just balanced a little bit better and you're really achieving the same sort of effect .

And the same thing applies to the Julian onion .

You can absolutely slice it thicker , no problem .

And now last , but not least for some onion rings , slice the ends off of each side of your onion .

And then of course , peel that outside layer .

Notice I did not cut it in half .

We're gonna make onion rings here .

Once you get all of that peeling off , we're gonna set it down on the cutting board and I'm gonna set it up on the side .

See how it rocks back and forth .

If you're comfortable cutting it like that .

Fantastic .

Go ahead and do it .

But if you're not turn it to the side , take a very thin slice off the end .

What this will sort of do is help balance it and keep it sturdy .

When you slice it .

When slicing rings , you can cut it as thin or as thick as you want .

This part is totally up to you .

So now you've got all these diced onions that you've been practicing , freeze them , save them later for stock or put them in a recipe that you can make tonight or tomorrow .

That way none of these onions go to waste and Comey's all my chefs in training out there .

You put these fundamental basic techniques like how to properly cut an onion , putting them into your everyday practice and recipes and food .

It will make you such a better cook , such a better home chef .

And plus really nice looking knife cuts .

It just makes the food look better .

I mean , when you go to a restaurant , you always are in a man , those onions and those cuts of the carrots , whatever it is , they look so pretty in there and you can do it too you put it in a practice .

I always tell you , I promise you the results are gonna be awesome in the end .

Now , I don't really have anything to play up in Slomo but check out these beautiful knife cuts .

My hope is you can get to practicing these knife cuts .

I promise you your recipes will look better , they will taste better .

All things included .

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We'll see you on there .