Cutting Onion for Gourmet Pasta with Sausage & Peppers

Video Transcript

"PAMELA BOWMAN: Next, we want to cut our onion, and I'm using a Vidalia onion which is a very sweet onion. I happen to like the Vidalias. Some of the stronger flavored onions in this particular pasta would be a little overpowering so this onion just gives a nice, mellow, sweet effect. We only really need half of this onion. It's a pretty big onion, so you can put this other side--this other bit of onion on the side and you can save that for a stock or for another dish. And let's go ahead and peel the onion back, peel our skin off. And as you can see it just peels really easily, and I'm not cutting the core off because I want that to hold in place. This right here is the core, which is going to make my cutting a lot easier. The principle is pretty much the same as the garlic. We are going to take this little tip off because it's a little bit brown. Now, we're going to go up our onion again with the flat of my palm and the flat of the onion on the board, cutting diagonally almost to the end but not quite, almost to the end but not quite, almost to the end but not quite. I got a fourth layer right there. And you can see it's already wanting to come apart, don't worry about that, and then down our onion toward the bulb end. And again, remember my claw that I showed you? Right. Those fingers are tucked back. We're getting a nice dice on that onion, small and pretty. And when we can't go any further, we're just going to turn it over and do the same thing all the way around. That little piece can be saved for stock as well, set this over on the side. And we've got a nice dice. If you need to come back in here, you can chop a little more, you can chop a little more. All right, we're moving on."