How to slice onions without tears: Proven kitchen hacks
When slicing onions, we often end up in tears. Use proven methods to ensure you don't shed a single tear.
Slicing onions is essential for preparing salads, soups, sauces, and other delicious dishes, especially during the holiday season. Several types of onions do not cause severe tearing and eye burning. These include red, sweet, white, and spring onions. Yellow onions are most likely to cause tears. How can we prevent this?
Onions will stop irritating your eyes
When an onion is cut, its structure is damaged, releasing enzymes, including allinase, which reacts with sulphur-containing amino acids. This causes the release of volatile sulfenic oxides that irritate our eyes and cause tearing.
To prevent this, cooling the onions in the fridge or freezer for about 30 minutes before slicing is beneficial. We don't always have time to cool the onions before cooking. In such a situation, they can be immersed in a bowl of very cold water for a few minutes - preferably with ice cubes. Before starting to slice, dry the onion with a paper towel.
One factor that can cause unpleasant symptoms is using a dull knife, which crushes the onion fibres and releases irritating enzymes. A well-sharpened knife will reduce the time needed to slice the vegetable and indirectly lessen the risk of eye irritation. It will work even better when chilled in cold water.
Another good method is slicing onions near a burning candle or a gas stove burner. The irritating fumes then rise to the top of the room.
When we slice onions in a small, enclosed space, their aroma can be unbearable. To avoid unpleasant odours accumulating just above the cutting board, it's worth improving air circulation—open a window or turn on a vent.
Tools that make onion slicing easier
We should get a special vegetable chopper with a hermetic seal if we don't fancy slicing onions. This gadget allows you to chop vegetables in seconds without a knife, minimising the time spent cutting vegetables and fruits while ensuring safety and precision in every cut.
Although some consider onion-cutting goggles useless, they can be very helpful. They protect your eyes from irritating fumes, which is particularly important for people suffering from allergies, conjunctivitis, or dry eye syndrome.
