Here’s a secret… it really doesn’t matter if they are identical.
It isn’t hard, but it is horribly unpleasant (particularly if you have sensitive eyes).
If you use a fresh onion that is straight from the refrigerator, you’ll find that isn’t the case. It also helps if you use a very sharp knife.
There are many such tricks. none of them are exactly easy or convenient (save having a sharp knife). I’ve tried several - the level of effectiveness is in direct proportion to how difficult and intrusive they are.
The best is putting the onion into the freezer, leaving it just long enough to not freeze, then cutting. Works a charm … except for the whole planning-out-your-onion-chopping-strategy-in-advance thing. Sorta inconvenient for mere veggie prep.
Leaving onions in the fridge long-term (let alone freezing them) affects their texture, so once again, it’s a matter of planning.
I guess it depends on what you consider long term. I routinely leave onions or partial onions in my fridge for 3 weeks or so at a time with no noticeable change in taste or texture. The only planning involved is pulling it out and chopping.
I like the cut your onion!
I keep empty relish jars around so that when I buy a new jar I can dump it into a bowl, mix it with an equal weight of chopped onion, and redistribute into two jars of onion/relish. The onion tends to stay crisp in the pickle juice for a surprisingly good while, and it saves me steps when I turn to prepare hot dogs.
I’m nowhere near an expert on this, but when the dices are the same size, they seem to cook down more evenly. So identical dices are desirable.
What’s the difference between “chopped” onion and “diced” onion?
anyway, they have chopped/diced onions in plastic containers in our Safeway.
How about we loosen it up from identical to similar. If some of your pieces are one inch square and others are a tenth of an inch you have a problem, but if they are all similar size I don’t care if they are squares, triangles, trapezoids, or what have you.
I’ve seen some picky eaters, but never seen anyone send a dish back because their onions were uneven.
What do you cook that only uses a spoonful of diced onion?
Seems like everything I’ve ever cooked requires half an onion at a minimum, and usually more than that.
**Kayaker **has the right solution though; they keep for a while in a ziploc bag in the refrigerator uncut. Plus, onions are dirt cheap- like $0.50 or $1.00 each.
And as far as the smelliness goes; make sure your knives are very sharp, and that’ll minimize that, as you’ll damage fewer cells and release less of the stinky stuff into the air that way.
Largest to smallest sized pieces: coarsely chopped, chopped, diced, finely diced, minced, pureed. (I think)
Forget I said identical. When I try to dice an onion, the pieces are not as similar in size as the ones that come pre-diced. (BTW, I’m cooking down these onions usually, so they’re not really visible in the final dish.)
Another thing. When I try dicing, the onion pieces cling to the side of the knife. But when I see people dicing in cooking shows, they don’t seem to have this problem. Why is that?
The science says that wet stuff sticks to knives because of surface tension. Get a knife with dimples, and when cutting make sure you are slicing and not chopping, so everything is constantly in motion.
In everyday reality though, while the above is all true, I’m guessing it’s mostly that the professional chefs on TV are doing it so fast, even if something sticks the next slice is pushing it up and away before you notice.
The OP wants to garnish a hot dog.
I say - buy a container of diced onion and pull out a spoonful to chop! Yes, you still need to get a knife dirty but it’s way fewer steps than chopping up a bit from a whole onion.
You mean mince?
If you cut diced onion into smaller pieces, you are creating minced onion. Right?
When I dice onions, I peel off the first layer of skin, slice them in half and rinse each half off in the sink. It seems to keep the onions from tear gassing me, it doesn’t require advanced planning and it adds maybe 3 seconds to my prep time.
Yeah… technically if you have diced, you would have to glue some pieces together to get chopped. But really it is just kind of a scale of different shades of gray.
(there must be 50 or more)
As I said, I’ve tried various methods. None of the easy ones work reliably for me.
A mere rinse of the onion, while it lessens the effect somewhat, does not eliminate it for me. If a 3 second rinse worked for everyone, why would anyone ever suggest wearing goggles, chopping the onion underwater, sticking it in the freezer, etc.? 