How to cut an Onion Easily! (dice an Onion)

Have you ever struggled with cutting up an onion into small pieces? It can be a very tricky task! Here are a few tips to make the job much easier.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Knife
• Cutting Board
• Onion

1. Peel the outer layer(s) off of the onion and discard them as you normally would. If you are only using half an onion, you may want to do step 2 first and then only peel off the outer layers of the half you want to use to help prevent the other half from drying out before you use it.

2. 
   Cut Onion in Half (red line)

   Place the onion on the cutting board and cut it in half. It is very important that you cut it in half vertically through the root and stem instead of horizontally.

3. The rest of the steps involve half of the onion at a time.

4. 
   Chop off Stem (red line)

   Next chop off the stem but leave the root on the onion. It is very important to leave the root on as this holds the onion together while you are cutting.

5. 
   Make Vertical Cuts (red lines)

   Now make vertical cuts from the root to the stem so that you are left with lots of onion slices. HERE IS THE SECRET!: Don't cut through the root when making your slices. If you picked up the onion by the root, for the most part it would still all stay together at this point.

6. 
   Make Horizontal Cuts (red lines) Previous Vertical Cuts are black lines

   Now, start making horizontal slices through the onion. The onion's natural layers combined with your vertical and now horizontal slices should give you the ideal small sized onion pieces you are after!

7. 
   Discard Root

   When you get to the very end where the root is, just stop and discard the root (you would have anyway if you had cut it off in the beginning!). Voila! Diced onion!

Tips & Warnings

• Check out the pictures for each step. It can be hard to explain/understand where to make cuts but the pictures clearly show it.
• As always be careful with knives!!!

[FrazzledNanny]

on 1/5/2009 Thank you! Somehow I always end up being in charge of slicing and dicing the onions. This looks easy. I can't wait to try it!