Chopping Onions

One of my favorite things to watch on TV is cooking shows. I watch Food Network, The Cooking Channel and the cooking shows on PBS. I watch them not only to learn what to do but also what not to do.

I find much of it highly informative. I love learning how to use fresh herbs, different spices and how to make food that is outside the familiar foods my mom made when I was growing up. My mom was a meat and potatoes kind of cook and, although we occasionally had pasta, it was mostly in the form of spaghetti or tuna casserole. Through the shows I have watched, I have been introduced to Indian and Thai cooking, all sorts of different Italian and French dishes and various other cuisines from around the world. It has expanded my horizons, food wise, and tickled my pallet with all kinds of interesting and exotic foods.

As much as I love the cooking shows for what I learn, I also watch some of them for, what I call, the irritation factor. The people who got a show on Food Network because of who they know and they themselves are no more than a regular ordinary cook who has a repertoire of maybe 20 dishes. I mean, really, do we have to roast ALL our vegetables???

But what does this have to do with chopping onions, which is the title of this posting? Well, I have noticed that so many cooks on TV seem to chop onions the same way. They cut off the one end, peel the skin but leave the root end intact. Then they cut across the onion in slices vertically, and, here is the puzzler, they cut it once or twice horizontally before they slice it into pieces.

Why is this extra horizontal cut or two a puzzler for me? Because it is entirely unnecessary. An onion, by design, is a layered vegetable. If you simply just slice it, it falls into rings. This is where onion rings come from. So if nature made the onion with it already cut into layers, why do we have to cut the onion through horizontally when nature already provides that cut?

I noticed that, years ago, some of the cooks on Food Network that weren’t trained chefs, skipped the horizontal cut. I was very pleased to see this because I always skip that cut. Then, as the years passed, they must have been told of the error of their ways by some chef and they started making that unnecessary horizontal cut.

Frankly I think chopping onions that way is akin to the pot roast story. What is the pot roast story? You may have heard it but for those who have not, here it is:

A little girl is watching her mother make a pot roast. She sees her cut the pot roast in two pieces before putting it in the pot. The little girl asks her mother why she cuts the roast in two? Her mother tells her because that is the way her mother did it.

“Well”, the little girl inquires, “why did she do it that way?”

“We will have to call her and ask her” her mother said.

So they call the little girl’s grandmother and ask her why she always cut the pot roast in two before putting it in the pot. The grandmother replied that she did it because that is the way her mom did it.

Not to be deterred, the mother and her little girl then call the great-grandmother.

“Nana”, they ask, “why do you cut the pot roast in two before you put it in the pot to cook it?”

“Well”, Nana replied, “I have to do it that way. My pot is too small and the roast won’t fit into it if I don’t cut it in two”.

And there you go. The technique of cutting the pot roast in two didn’t have anything to do with culinary expertise but simply because of the size of a woman’s pot.

That is why I think chefs insist on making the horizontal cut when cutting onions. It really is unnecessary and a waste of time. But someone down the line somewhere felt it was a necessary maneuver. They didn’t notice that the onion already had natural cuts in it so they insisted on making that horizontal cut. And that has been taught and passed on so that now it is the standard. When it is truly the onion equivalent of the pot roast story.

No matter how many cooking shows I watch, I will never make that unnecessary horizontal cut when cutting an onion. Not only that but most of the time I cut the root end off the onion as well. Granted the onion would probably be more stable if I left it on but this was the way I learned to do it and it is simply habit now.

Actually I think that the professional chefs who advise the cooks who have shows on TV would be better off teaching kitchen cleanliness rather than worrying about that unnecessary horizontal cut in the onion. Some of the cooks, and only a small number, never seemed to learn that when handling raw meat, especially chicken, one needs to use a different cutting board and separate knife and wash their hands after touching it. And washing one’s hands does not involve running them under water. It involves soap and rubbing the hands together to make sure all the bacteria is off.

I saw one cook, who I won’t name, actually touch a raw chicken breast then stick her fingers into a bar of goat cheese and shove the goat cheese under the skin of the chicken, put the same fingers back into the goat cheese and shove more of it under the skin. All the while the chicken is sitting on a wooden cutting board. So the board, the goat cheese and her hands are now all contaminated with chicken bacteria. Then, not even washing anything, she put the chicken breast on a sheet tray and put it in the oven. So now she has contaminated the oven door. YUK!!!

So, for all of the professional chefs who advice people on the proper kitchen techniques when they have a show on TV, stop worrying about the chopping of the onions and worry about teaching people how not to poison themselves, the people who eat their food and all the people watching the show to learn something. Not only is that more helpful but it won’t be continuing the unnecessary horizontal cutting of onions!