Is This the Best Way to Dice Onions?
Working at Lifehacker means questioning everything and being open to the fact that “the way we’ve always done it” isn’t always the best way to keep going. But “best” is relative, especially when we talk about food, as there are often multiple ways to reach the same endpoint; not to mention that culture, historical context, and personal preference influence what we consider “best”.
However, for something like diced onions, the criteria are pretty simple: the method should be as safe as possible and produce even, uniform chunks with minimal waste.
And while I love that Lindsay from the United Kingdom has found a method for slicing onions that suits her needs, I’m not sure I would recommend it as a good practice to every home chef.
Lindsay’s technique is not as different from the traditional as it seems. However, she skips a couple of steps and is essentially making a flowering onion before cutting it into smaller pieces. If you’ve ever had a flowering onion, you know that the petals are thin at the ends and thicker in the middle, so the resulting chunks are pretty uneven.
But not every dish requires completely uniform cubes, so my biggest problem with this method is safety: this onion flower is wobbly, unwieldy, and constantly tries to bloom. Without a flat piece to put on a cutting board, you’ll have to struggle to hold the onion together as you cut and dice it, which is a recipe for finger cuts.
But Lindsey’s method has its merits. I love that she leaves the root – or “hairy pieces” – intact, and I love that she follows the ridges of the onion when she “cuts it like an orange.” Both are good methods of cutting onions, but trying to slice wobbly flowering onions is not. Watch the video to see how the test run of her onion cutting program went.