The Best Ways Cut Onions (And The Worst) | Epicurious 101

hi i'm frank proto i'm a professional chef and a culinary instructor and this is everything you need to know about [Music] cutting onions this is not bad at all it's sweet if i can smell the onion that's coming through my pores already we'll be going over the best methods to peel and cut your onions with the least amount of tears we're talking slicing dicing chopping grating just to name a few this is cutting onions 101 onions are the backbone of so many savory dishes every dish needs a different type of cut and those cuts determine how much flavor your onions will have let's get into the first chapter how to peel your onions i'm gonna make everyone on set cry today wait wait wait wait before we get into anything let's address the tears and the myths onions contain both sulfur compounds and an enzyme called synthase as soon as you cut into the onions those two elements combine to form a chemical compound called synpropenophil oxide sin sin propenethyl s oxide that compounds released into the air and that's what irritates the glands in your eyes there are a lot of myths and methods that people say will stop you from crying some of the methods that could work is make sure you cut with a sharp knife avoid cutting the onion near the root end but honestly the only thing that's ever worked for me is wearing my contact lenses now that we got all that out of the way it's time to peel there's a few different ways to peel onions and it all depends on what you're going to use them for the first way i'm going to show you is the way that we teach in culinary school this is not my preferred method but it's something you should learn just to have it as a skill it takes two knives paring knife and a chef knife for this part i'm gonna use a paring knife usually what you'll do is you'll take the bottom off and then you'll peel away the skin to the root end make sure that you get any dry skin off because dry skin is basically paper now you want to leave the root intact but you don't want any of these kind of ugly root ends so you're just going to cut this flat i'll leave the root end intact especially for when we're slicing and chopping this makes the onion hold together so that it's not kind of falling apart while you're cutting it and that is the classic culinary school peel part of the reason i don't like this method is that i have to use two knives i use a paring knife and then i have to put this down and chop with my chef knife the method that i use on a daily basis when i peel my onions is a little different i learned it from one of my cooks i'll never forget them alberto alberto said chef you're doing that wrong and i was a chef so i was like my my prep cook's telling me how to cut onions those are the best people to learn from because they do it more than you shout out to my friend alberto i'm going to cut off both ends i'm not worried about that root end because when i chop it it's going to be a little bit of a different method and then i cut it in half and i just peel away that first layer people will be like oh chef you wasted so much but when i went to culinary school i was taught to use this in my stop so it's not a waste now my method might not work if you're making onion rings or you're grating the onion but it works for pretty much every other cut once you're done peeling you want to make sure that you clean your cutting board of all skin any little bits and pieces you can see this onion here has a little piece of skin you want to make sure that comes off this is an edible this is like paper you might as well just take napkins and paper towels and put them in your food now that our onions are peeled let's get into how we're going to cut them we're going to start by slicing and there's a few ways you can do this you can do full rings half rings thick slices thin slices and julienne we use the julienne cut when we don't want the onions to fall apart right so something like a french onion soup you want to see these slices of onions in there all the onions have these lines i'm cutting with those lines and that's my julienne so i follow the curve of the onion just to get even slices so you'll see that my knife follows the curve once i get here i flop that down and i start following the curve again of the onion another way to slice an onion is to cut into rings and this is where i use that nice peeled onion with the culinary school method the root is intact normally you want your onion to be flat so it doesn't roll but when it comes to rings it's always going to roll a little so you want to make sure you have a good grip and with thin rings i'm just going to make sure i have a nice sharp knife this i would use for maybe salad and then you can kind of do thick rings that you would use for onion rings now i change my grip there and i grab it from either side and i cut it like that with half rings you would just cut your onion in half and peel it again i don't have the stem on this one i'm just going nice and thin this is great for garnishes i use this for sandwiches as well and then you can just go nice and thick as well thick half rings use for something like fajitas or something that you want to have some onion bite to now let's get into dicing the onions we're gonna go over fine chop small dice and medium dice i'm gonna do a small dice first and this is how you would do it the culinary school way i'm gonna cut it through the root end leaving that root end intact that's gonna hold my onion together i'm gonna lay it down flat root end away from me i'm just going to cut but not cut all the way through the tip of my knife is not cutting through the end go all the way right turn it cut through we're going to rock our knife or go through and cut a small dice now this end piece you can turn over and get a few more cuts out of it but you can always use this for stock this i would use for a garnish on something maybe like tacos i would also use this to kind of saute in a soup where i want the onions kind of fall apart now i want to show you small dice with my method it's similar to the culinary school method it's just a lot quicker i find that it's at least one third quicker i take the root end and i turn it away from it now i'm going to cut but not all the way through and basically what i'm doing here is i'm cutting it along its natural separations i'm going to take my knife and follow the angle of the onion right when we get to this point flop it down and then just finish my dice i always find this is a little safer i don't particularly like cutting towards myself on the culinary school method and it usually just falls apart along its natural separations for the medium dice it's the same method we're just going to cut it bigger instead of getting it really small we're just going to make our cuts bigger and of course i'm using my method here i'm going to use this for things that i want to see the onions in they're not going to melt like the small dice there'll be some chunks of onions again kind of soups stews and stuff like that let's get into the finely chopped onions and this is really going to make you cry the cut is really similar to the small dice except i'm going to go really close together here again a sharp knife really helps with this right and then we get in there and get as close as humanly possible without slicing my fingers off and if it's not small enough for you then you get your knife in here and you rock and you get your nice fine chop i'm not crying because i'm wearing my contact lenses is anyone else on the crew crying let me keep chopping we'll see we'll get there finely chopped onions you can use as a garnish if you've ever seen caviar service they always have a little finely minced onions for that and if you're not that fancy you can cook it and use it in stuffings they just kind of disappear is anyone i'm feeling this now so to get results like this you can also use a food processor or you can go on the internet and get one of these gadgets look it has all the parts let's give it a go i'm going to take a half onion there we go snap it in are we ready for this [Music] look at that that worked a lot better than i thought it would i'm not usually a gadget guy but that i'm pretty impressed that's it for dicing let's move on to grading this is a box grater if you don't have one go out and pick one up every house needs to have one of these you have fine shredding large shredding grating and then slicing slicing is kind of useless just use a knife but all the other sides are great i'm usually grating onions for maybe something like meatballs meatloaf but especially when i make potato pancakes that's what you want to do this is perfect for potato pancakes if you grate like this i call this the granny method right using a lot of muscle groups and you get tired really fast i have a different method i get myself a tray i'm going to lay my grater on its side and kind of hold these two together so instead of grating i'm taking my whole onion and i'm pushing right so i can use my body weight i have some considerable body weight to use and you just push not only is it quicker it's more efficient i don't need to clean my board and i don't need to scrape all of the gratings off of my board my fingers are kind of angled up treat a box grater just like a knife look at this on the punchy scale this is definitely a 10 out of 10. this is gonna make everybody cry open a window turn on the fan get out of the kitchen and if you eat this raw you're definitely never gonna get kissed and there you have it all the onion cutting techniques you're ever gonna need in the kitchen these cuts are not only great for onions but you can use them for all your vegetables in the kitchen don't eat onions like apples it's a bad idea [Music]

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 1,051,092

Keywords: best way to chop onions, chef knife skills, chop onions, chopping onions, cut onion like a pro, cut onions like a pro, cutting onions, diced onion, diced onions, epi, epicurious, epicurious 101, epicurious frank proto, frank proto, grate onions, how to chop onions, how to cut an onion, how to cut onions, how to dice onion, how to finely chop an onion, how to grate onions, how to prep onions, knife skills, onion slices, onions, professional chef skills, recipes

Id: 5kOUV6srez4

Length: 10min 21sec (621 seconds)

Published: Wed May 04 2022