Some people like that.
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Sounds like the same symptoms. Thanks, I’ll talk to my doc about that.
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Weird, that’s not my experience at all - I already dislike raw onions (compounded by a mild allergy; they make my mouth very sore), and reds feel like more unpleasant sharpness and more allergy effects, without any more actual taste. Not a fan.
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I seem to recall already experiencing that, hence the rubber glove! Or are you talking about the other result, of very spicy food coming out the other end from whence it went in? A college friend called that “the howling skitters”.
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That’s the thing though. So far as I know they don’t have a higher sugar content. Just a lower sulfur content.
You’re damn right. I’ve always though that was meant to make it go faster. But it doesn’t work at all. And there’s no reason to sweeten something that’s already pretty damn sweet.
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Exposure therapy?
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The way you prepare onions has a large effect on how much propanethial S-oxide actually reaches your eyes. It’s a reasonably high molecular weight compound so it’s mostly going to be delivered via aerosol rather than vapor; onion juice gets aerosolised when the tissue is torn or crushed, but not when it’s cut with a very sharp knife.
As you do more cooking, you are likely to get better at peeling onions (with less tearing), and in particular, you’re more likely to have sharp knives, which are the answer to this and most other problems.
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Ah ha, sharp knives! Thanks, I was wondering while reading this thread why the many, and many different, onions I cut up don’t cause me to tear up.
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Regular onions to disguise why you are crying.
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For those who don’t know, here’s one technique. The idea is to avoid releasing the juices of the onion into the air. So…
- Cut off both ends of the onion.
- Cut the onion in half lengthwise, remove skin.
- Place one half cut side down on your cutting board.
- Cut into slices across the onion so that you make little half rings
- While holding the onion together, slice lengthwise. I angle these cuts toward the center, but you don’t have to.
- Repeat with other half of onion.
- Voilà!, diced onion.
This method drives any spare onion juice into your cutting board, and away from sensitive tear ducts.
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Ha, that’s exactly how I do it.
Except for the angle cuts what does that do?
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It just makes the diced pieces a little more uniform. That’s all.
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Ah, got it, thanks.
If only most people knew of this quick n easy way, there’d be no need to develop tear-free onions.
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Man, 54 comments in, and nobody has posted the video of my favorite “chili-hand-to-eye contamination” comedy sketch?
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That’s basically what I do, except I leave the bottom of the onion on until I’m done cutting, so it doesn’t all fall apart. the last cut removes the bottom and I throw it away
For me it’s not about tearing up, although that may be a positive side-effect. I certainly notice onions bother me a lot less now than when I was a kid. I just do it that way because it’s the easiest/fastest way to dice an onion
the fact that I have a decent knife now, instead of some laser-cut serrated silliness probably helps the eye irritation also
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A good knife is essential. I love my santoku knife, which I use for everything vegetable.
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Yeah, I got a chicago cutlery santoku knife about a decade ago and it’s been really good. The pull-through sharpener that my partner was kind enough to buy was equally important, because if I didn’t have that, I think it would basically be a butter knife by now
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I love onions with all kinds of dishes. When we go to visit my dad in Florida he always has a bag of them at home that he uses in cooking, or that he just eats raw like an apple and I’m like “Right on, Onion King!” He says they’re special sweet onions but when I have them raw on a salad or sandwich they may as well just be iceberg lettuce, they are so bland and flavorless.
They grow in soil with very low sulfur levels, and apparently sulfur is what makes onions taste so good to me. So I’ll probably have zero interest in this sunion abomination, but if you like iceberg lettuce onions then more power to you! 
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No actually. There are multiple approaches. The first thing is to have a very sharp knife. Your step number five is a fairly dangerous way to dice the onion whether or not it reduces tears.
Frenching (cutting perpendicular to the “equator”) of the onion destroys fewer cells than cross cutting. Releasing fewer noxious sulfer compounds.
The more cuts you make the more you release so fewer cuts minimize it.
For dicing an onion you make perpendicular cuts through the onion (and sometimes tip to root) carefully angle the knife tip up, heel down. To leave the onion connected to the root end. And avoid cutting the solid mass at the base of the root. There’s a lot more of the compounds in question down by the root end so you want to avoid slicing into that bit. then you cross cut.
Slicing cuts break fewer cells than push cutting. So you want plenty of lateral motion in your knife.
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