The tragic tale of the onion. How to reduce tears.

Okay, for those of you with no sense of humour: This is meant to be FUNNY!!, or at least mildly humorous, This tale stems from the inevitable stream of tears that runs down my face when I cut onions.

So yesterday I was joking around about the sad tale of the poor little onion who got separated from his cozy home in the ground, where he was living with his mother and father and two brothers and one sister, this poor little onion was thrown in with a bunch of strangers. Just as he was getting to know these strangers, he was separated from these strangers and thrown in with more strangers and put into a little mesh bag barely big enough for the bunch of them.

These onions were just getting aquainted, and getting to know all the rest of the hundreds of onions around them when some stranger grabbed the mesh bag and dropped it into a basket, then placed it on a conveyer belt with some lettuce, some celery and some other items, then took it to this strange place where it got thrown into a basket. And got sniffed by cats.

One by one the little onion lost all his friends until there were only a few left, then one day the little onion was picked up, and inside he cheered, but then he cried, bitter bitter tears as the knife sliced into him. Those bitter tears permeated the skin the nose and the eyes of the cruel human that was holding the knife, making her cry but it was too late for the onion, who was soon turned into a yummy meal.

First of all there's the obvious, you could use a food processor, but you don't always want your onions pureed, and that's the chance you take when you use a food processor. No matter what model of food processor you use, you still have to handle it to peel it and cut the ends off and depending on the model, you *still* have to handle the onion to cut it into pieces small enough to fit through the feeder. Not to mention that If you're doing French onion soup, at home, and want to do it traditionally, in rings, most home food processors in the non professional price range don't have feeders large enough for entire onions.

A long time ago they used to use things called cutting boards and knives to cut onions!! They did! Honest!

You can't always get a perfect slice with a knife, and you're more likely to cry if you do it wrong, It's smelly, and no matter how many times you wash your hands the smell doesn't go away. It's still my preferred method though, I can choose the size, whether to slice, dice, I can almost puree. The problem has always been those tears rolling down my face. Well that and the smell left on my fingers and in the cutting board.

One of the first suggestions I ever heard for drying my tears was to cut an onion under water. I never thought this was very practical, first the onion gets slippery, second, it's a pain in the butt to keep track of all those little bits of onion in a sink full of water, and you pretty much have to use the sink because nothing else is big enough, or convenient enough to fit the knife and the onion and still be able to actually cut it.

Another silly suggestion was washing your eyes, Umm yeah think about this for just a second, your hands are covered with onion juice and you are about to either use them to handle a wash cloth, to apply to your eyes, or to wash water into your eyes. Unless of course for some reason you have an eye wash station in your home, or enjoy bending backwards under a faucet.

There are two really effective ways to avoid tears when cuting onions, neither of which is foolproof, and they go hand in hand. First, use a sharp knife and cut quickly. If you use a dull knife you crush the cells instead of cutting them. as you would with a sharp knife. If you happen to have to deal with fumes, and your eyes start to burn, stick your head in your freezer. Yes, my husband looked at me funny the first time I told him that too. But we have a standing agreement: If he wants me to make him French Onion Soup, He has to cut the onions, and his eyes HURT after cutting more than five pounds of onions. No matter what he does to try to avoid the fumes.

I have seen two other suggestions: They are to cut onions on a gas range, with a couple of the burners turned on. This would work in a manner similar to the other suggestion: The candle, though it would take multiple candles to get rid of the fumes. Flames require oxygen. Using a gas range or candles while you're cutting onions would, in theory, remove the fumes from the air as it burns the oxygen around it. But the candle, or the burner from the range would have to be quite close to catch the fumes before they got to you.

There *is* a guaranteed way to get rid of that smell without washing your hands a hundred times. *AND* without stinking of onions for a month.

When you're done with the onions, and when you've used a little vinegar to wash off your board. (Vinegar smells better and is safer than bleach. If you're really worried you can get cleaning strength vinegar). Wash your hands with whatever you're going to wash them with, dry them, then take an ordinary stainless steel (Yes, it does have to be stainless steel) knife out of your cutlery drawer, and rub that knife all over your *dry* hands. If your hands are wet you will only succeed in spreading the juice, possibly to places where it wasn't before, so make sure your hands are thoroughly dry before using the knife. This same trick also works for removing garlic juice from skin. 8)