And brathing through your mouth, I find.
Chewing gum helps too. I have no clue why.
Exactly. Use a very sharp knife as not to crush the cells. Don’t cut your fingers in the process.
As onions are the Devil’s apples it’s going to take more than chemistry to help those evil things! An exorcism perhaps… 
I for one look forward to less toxic varieties that exact a more shall we say, heavenly experience.
Signed a hopeful onion sufferer. 
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Maybe thats how they make the sunions.
I might need to try them now. I need my food to be more satanic.
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That’s pretty dangerous too. The horizontal cuts for dicing are both unnecessary and likely to allow your knife to slip and cut you. I remember seeing the Culinary Institute of America recommend doing this but most sources don’t. I stopped doing this quite a few years ago, my dice is as fine but I never cut myself.
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I’ve never cut myself doing that and it’s considered the “proper” way to a fine dice. If you have your off hand positioned correctly it’ll be tucked back where it’s unlikely you’ll cut your self.
It’s not neccisary and I don’t do it often. But the point of it is to slice the 2 sections of onion in either side. As those two sections tend to end up wider than the others, as they don’t contain the onion layers that stand in for horizontal cuts for the rest of the onion. Leading to some unevenness (you’ve now got some larger bits mixed into your dice).
It’s only something you should do if you’re concerned about evenness and consistency of your onion bits. And I’m not. I generally want my onions a bit uneven.
You can avoid it by making your vertical cuts radially, like when you French the onion. But since you’re moving the blade around there it’s probably less safe than the horizontal cuts. (when frenching you keep the knife straight up and down and rotate the onion)
More annoyingly the horizontal cuts tend to make the onion looser or even fall apart. Which is where the real danger of being cut comes in. As you’re attempting to hold it together. And it often brings it’s own level of inconsistency. Basically you need a very, very sharp knife and you should only bother if you need a very even, very fine dice.
I tried the “Kenji” method several times (doing deep horizontal cuts, leaving the stem intact, then deep vertical cuts, then dicing) and as @Ryuthrowsstuff says, it makes the onion so loose that you have to hold the whole thing together in order to dice it, which for me made it way more slippery and dodgy as bits came loose, etc.
Frankly, 95% of the time when I’m chopping an onion I’m going to either throw it into a recipe or sauté/caramelize it anyway, so I’m not at all concerned with the aesthetics of my dice. I just slice it into fairly consistently thick chunks, then chop the pile repeatedly until the bits are the approximate size I need — pausing to wipe the tears away.
My method is to cut onion in halves, then cut each half into even strips and then cross cut them, i don’t really bother making more cuts to get perfect cubes either. i don’t see what the point of going that far is.
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90% of the time I French the onion. The rest of the time it’s a rough dice. I only do a fine dice for the rare thing that really calls for it. Smooth stuffings/fillings/pates. Soups where you want minimal onion bits.
No, just the capsecum oils on your hands from those peppers and any part of your anatomy that does not need any extra stimulation.
Sort of like the warning you get when you eat the Jolokia hot wings: "Whatever you do, DO NOT WIPE YOUR EYES with that napkin."
You will go painfully blind for a while.
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