Cutting an onion the wrong way can lead to choppy pieces and watery eyes. In this ‘UBC Chef Tips’ video, Chef Brad demonstrates a safe and easy way to dice those onions properly!
Hello! I'm Chef Brad, Executive Chef for Residence Dining at UBC Food Services. Today I'm going to show you how to dice an onion.
One of the first things you should do when you're working with something round is to cut it into a flat surface. For onions, what we're going to do is cut through the root end, across the width of the onion. You want to keep those roots in tact.
A lot of times you may see somebody cutting those roots off. The key part of dicing it is leaving the root attached. I'll show you why that's important.
We'll take off the top end of the onion, moving that off to the side. Score the top of the skin in order to peel it back easier. Then peel back the outer layer of the onion and leave it attached to the root. This turns it into a handle for you so it's easier to hang onto and safer for you while you're dicing it.
Once you have the root attached, you can anchor your hand there. The onion won't move. Then, keep your fingertips away from the edge of your knife, and slice!
Another benefit to this is it's going to hold the rest of your onion together while you're dicing. A horizontal cut through the onion, and then small pieces off of the front. And you've got beautifully diced onions without having to rearrange your slices of onions.
And that is how you dice an onion!
