I Love Onions, But They Don’t Love Me

If you do any amount of cooking from scratch you will very often be faced with the the dismal duty of chopping onions. I REALLY hate chopping onions. They sting my poor eyes like the dickens. However, onions are really delicious in many dishes, cooked or fresh. Plus, they are not hard to to find on sale at the grocery store so chopping your own is a good idea for frugal living. I have sometimes cheated and purchased frozen chopped onions, but they just don’t seem the same to me.

I have tried lots of different ways to take the sting out of chopping onions. Here are some tear-abating recommendations that I have come across over the years that have not worked for me: chopping under water (also running water); chopping off the top end and the root end first; breathing through your mouth while chopping. My housekeeping bible, “The I Hate to Housekeep Book” recommends chopping onions with a lighted match between your lips, but I think that this maneuver would most likely result in burning eyes and burning lips (but if you have tried this, let me know. Send pictures, too).

So, out of desperation I have found three probably fool-proof methods. I’ll start with my least favorite:

1. Food Processor: This works pretty well; one of the things I don’t like about it is that I’m just not too fond of my food processor, anyway. The onions come out really “juicy”, plus cleaning my food processor is a real drag. And this method requires chopping in any case.

But this is a good way to go if you have gotten a bargain deal on a 50lb bag of onions three months ago, and they are now starting to get a little squirrely. Before they completely get away from you, chop them up in your food processor and freeze them. Processing 47lbs of onions makes cleaning the food processor worthwhile.

2. This one is my all-time favorite: Get my husband to do it. For some reason, onions don’t seem to have the same evil effect on him as they do on me. Maybe it’s because he is a lot taller than I am (and so his eyes are a lot farther away from the onions). He’s good at it, too; his onions always come out great.

But plenty of times he isn’t around to do the deed, so I came up with this method for those times when I have only myself and my sharp knife to get those onions chopped:

3. Wear swim goggles. This works great! There is only one drawback to this for me: I happen to be terribly nearsighted so I have to be careful when I do this -the goggles I have don’t fit over my eye-glasses. But even when I lean in very close to the chopping action (so I can see what I’m doing) the fumes still don’t get past my goggles. I suppose a scuba-diving mask might be better, but I’m not sure if that would fit over my glasses either. I did find some work-type goggles out in the garage that do fit over my glasses. These have a bunch of little ventilation holes in the sides, though, so they don’t do as good a job at keeping out the fumes as the swim goggles do, but are still much better than chopping “naked”.

So if one the things that is keeping you from cooking from scratch (and therefore saving money) is a fear of chopping onions, fear no more! Run down to your nearest Big Lots and buy yourself a cheap multi-pack of swim goggles (I have three pair in three different colors). Now is a good time to do it, too, because they have all their summer stuff out. Happy chopping!