My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on April 18, 2021

Is there a better way to “dice” and onion?

The Lifehacker “Hack or Wack” crew gave the UK tipster’s method a try … and I’ll probably do the same even though they concluded it was “wack.” Still, there might be a couple modifications that could keep the onion flat on the cutting board and still use the wedge slice idea???

Lyndsey’s technique isn’t as different from the traditional as it appears. She does, however, skip a couple of steps, and essentially makes a bloomin’ onion before slicing it into smaller pieces. If you’ve ever had a bloomin’ onion, you know that the “petals” are slender on the ends and fatter in the middle, so the resulting pieces come out quite uneven.

But not every dish calls for a completely uniform dice, so my larger issue with this method is one of safety: That onion flower is wobbly, unwieldy, and constantly trying to bloom. Without a flat portion to rest on the cutting board, you have to fight to hold the onion together as you slice and dice, which is a recipe for finger lacerations.

But Lyndsey’s method does have its merits. I like that she leaves the root—or “hairy bits”—intact, and I like that she follows the ridges in the onions when she’s “slicing it like an orange.” Both are good onion cutting practices, but trying to dice a wobbly bloomin’ onion is not. Check out the video to see exactly how our trial run of her onion-cutting hack went down.

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