Edit: Swim goggles should work too if you don’t have to worry about glasses.
I know this will be obvious to some, but I’ve never seen anyone in my family wear them. It’s so obvious once you think about it, and yet I’d wager most people (especially ones who don’t cook as a hobby) have never tried this.
The reason you cry is because slicing onions produces an organosulfur called syn-Propanethial-S-oxide. Lab goggles – as designed – keep the chemical irritant from reaching your eyes. I’ve used them hundreds of times now, and I think there was one time it got into my eyes when I didn’t have the goggles situated right (not difficult; I was just being a moron).
My 3M anti-fog pair were about $5 USD when I got them, and it looks like they’re about $7.50 USD now. For that price, I never have to dread cutting up onions again. It’s not magic; it’s just basic PPE, and it works. You can even wear them over eyeglasses (I’m sure some huge, circular frames won’t fit, but most should).
Even if you forget them and remember them midway through slicing, it can still help somewhat. So even if you’re as absent-minded as I am, you can benefit from trying this.
These (below) were the ones I got personally, but feel free to try what you already have if you already have a pair on-hand for e.g. cleaning. I’d assume the important thing is just that they’re goggles, not glasses.
Why YSK: owie, oof, ouchie, my eyes. Cooking is just DIY organic chemistry.
The vapour released is attached to the moisture in your eyes so just stick your tongue out for the duration of the onion cutting and you’ll be reet
Everyone should own some eye protection. A quality respirator is also extremely useful and very wise to have around in many circumstances.
Let’s pull out the breathing mask one uses for spray paint and invite someone over for dinner /s and /j
We didn’t install an eye wash station for you to use goggles.
Or a small fan to blow/suck it away from you
yep. I just blow it into the living or dining room. easier for half a dozen people to deal with it than just myself
Literally never had that happen. And it’s often more than half a dozen people in the room the fan faces. Concentration of it is too diluted by the air from the fan or something. Not sure why it doesn’t have the effect but I’ve never had a problem in that regard.
Seems like it might make sense but is not my experience, anecdotal evidence being what it is
No need for a sharp knife, just don’t breathe with you nose (or don’t breathe at all while cutting).
I just cut the onions on the stove with the ventilator running. It allows me to slice/dice/mince the onions however which way I want without any tears.
You could also sharpen your knives and cut them properly.
Cut vertically (with the veins). You basically get no stinging that way (until you start cutting horizontally)
Use a sharp knife because a duller knife is less safe, and it does more smashing than cutting which casues more fumes.
Don’t put your head over the onions as you work. Take a half step back and extend your arms more so you’re further away from the fumes.
If your kitchen is not well ventilated, put your cutting board on the stove and turn on the hood.
Don’t cut the root off either. Use it to hold the onion together and in my experience also seems to lessen the effect on my eyes.
You waste so much onion that way though
I cut it in half and slice off a much as I need then put the rest in a snapware in the fridge. Eventually it all gets used. I’ve had onions last for weeks doing this. No crying either.
That makes sense, and is what I do. I would call this “cut off the root last” instead of “don’t cut off the root.”
For me the biggest factor is the age of the onion, which can be quite aged before it reaches you the consumer, especially with recovered produce.
I guess it depends on how much you leave behind. No different for me.
Yeah, I cut the root to a nub, just enough to essentially clean the bottom, but not enough for the onion to fall apart. But same as you: whatever I don’t finish lasts over a week, and I chop up everything that remains and use all of it.
You don’t, it actually works really well unless the onion has already started breaking down and is “juicy.”
If you want to use as much of the onion as possible, just slice across normal until you get down to the small core section near the root. Then rotate and make a couple slices to separate the core then chop the slices.
The onion around the core tends to be the tougher bits so tossing it isn’t a generaly a big deal but that’s how you recover all the good parts.
This is true. (re: droplets; study also rejects the popular chilling method). People in my experience don’t understand how much safer a sharp knife is until you put one in their hands and get them to just try it.
Otherwise, though, the “fume hood” approach seems extremely excessive when a cheap, comfortable, unobstructive pair of goggles is likely to work more consistently and with less thought. I merrily chop with my cutting board wherever I want and standing however I want.
A sharp knife is something you should be using regardless, but these other methods like meticulous posture, fume hoods, pre-soaking, etc. all seem more convoluted and varying degrees of less effective than grabbing some goggles from a drawer and putting them on your face.
Just remember: The Onion would do the same to you if it could.
How soft do you have to be to cry over cutting an onion? Like, they can’t even feel it so just chill.
“Onions make me sad, a lot of people don’t realize that. When I’m cutting onions, I’m sad. Because the plight of onions, it’s sad. But people don’t realize I’m actually crying - they think I’m just reacting.”
Mitch Hedberg
We vegans kind of slide everything over, so slaughtering animals becomes unthinkable, and butchering vegetables becomes sad.
You know what? If that carrot were in the wild, it’d be way worse off. Imagine being gnawed on for hours by a rabbit; I’m giving it a quick, painless™ death. You moralizing nihilivores are obnoxious.
THINK OF THE POOR BABY CARROT!!! 🥕
[insert modified justification from Vegan Bingo here]
Just put water in your mouth and hold it in, works fine.
Some of the suggestions in the replies are kind of baffling to me in the face of an effectively foolproof, dirt-cheap, comfortable, and trivial solution with basically no downsides. Like you do you, but “yeah, just hold water in your mouth for the indeterminate amount of time you spend cutting up onions” is so ridiculous compared to just saying “here, try some basic PPE”.
It’s hard to imagine even doing that routinely without thinking “surely there’s a better way??” and stumbling upon this.
in the face of an effectively foolproof, dirt-cheap, comfortable, and trivial solution with basically no downsides
you mean sharpening your knife, opening a window or turning on the vent fan?
you mean sharpening your knife
Helps, and you should be doing it anyway; not 100% effective, as I always keep my knife sharp. I could cut more slowly too (empirically shown to help), but why would I? I’m not at all recommending against knife-sharpening, because regardless of onions, a dull knife is a safety hazard.
opening a window
I’ve never lived in a house where the window is less than 5 meters from any kitchen countertop. Also heavily dependent on the weather (pollen count, haze, storm, obnoxiously high wind or too calm to help, way too cold or way too hot, etc.)
or turning on the vent fan?
Yeah, I’ll just move my cutting board underneath my stove’s vent fan like a low-rent fume hood instead of just slapping on some unobtrusive goggles from the drawer. You can, but this is a bootleg solution I’d use at a friend’s house, not when I cut up onions once a week.
The fact that you listed “opening a window” as “comfortable” (*gestures broadly at the weather*), “dirt-cheap” (*gestures broadly at heating and cooling costs*), and “trivial” (not if you don’t have one; look at typical apartment layouts if you think this is uncommon) is what I’m getting at: people have suboptimal, often nongeneralizable half-solutions to this easily solved problem and then try to “or you could just” when someone suggests basic PPE.
I’m not baffled people have solutions that work well enough for them; I am baffled at suggesting them over the clearly optimal solution for the most general audience. (Disclaiming as “general audience” because contacts seem to have it beat when you already wear them; couldn’t say for sure.)
Keeping your knives wicked sharp also helps a lot.
is it weird that I don’t really have this problem?
as a kid I developed a resistance working in a kitchen
as an adult it somewhat continued due to onions being an important part of every meal
but sometimes you just get one of those fuckers that’s so goddamn juicy that the mere sight of it brings you to tears
every great once in a while, I get a bit of a twinge and a tear, but it’s very rare
same. and usually at somebody else’s house, too. even if I bring my own (sharp) knife lmao
are we still talking about onions ;)
I honestly thought it was just me. No reaction at all, dull knife white onions nothing
Onions don’t bother me either. I used to volunteer to cut them doing prep work so my co-workers didn’t have to cry. I think we’re just lucky. I guess it’s our lame superpower.
I think so?? Some of it depends, I think, on the variety of onion (e.g. I’ve always found sweet onions to be gentler compared to white onions). I don’t always cry without them per se, but it still feels noxious.
Sharpness of your knife, time spent cutting, how close your face is to it and I’m pretty sure just biological differences all play part.
I used to “cry” more from it when I was a teenager because my mom had shitty knives and I was just worse at cutting them so it took more time and I was shorter (obviously).
Now I only have any issues at all at home when I’m sitting down, which I sometimes have to due to bad knee and back.
And almost always get it pretty bad when I’m cooking with/for my mom and other family members at her place as she only has serrated knives, which makes it a lot worse, but she refuses to have anything else.
