How To Chop Onions Without Crying Your Eyes Out; Try These 5 Effective Tips & Tricks

Hate chopping onions because of their assault on your eyes? Try these 5 popular and effective methods to save yourself some tears for later.

Onions, as important as they are for our Indian Cuisine, are as difficult to deal with when chopping vegetables for cooking. The assault on tear ducts can be truly unbearable when you are crying your eyes out. 

Why does chopping onions cause eyes to tear up?

The reason that onions make people cry a river is that they produce a chemical irritant known as syn-propanethial-S-oxide which stimulates the eyes' lachrymal glands to release tears. So when you chop an onion you are breaking its skin barrier that releases this chemical which is volatile as it easily vaporizes causing a burning sensation when it comes in contact with your eyes. To protect your eyes from being damaged, your brain quickly triggers a tear response to rinse the irritant away.

Tips & tricks to use for chopping onions

• Refrigeration

One method that is easiest to follow and works the best is freezing onions. For this, all you need to do is peel the onion and chop the ends of it. Then put it in a bowl filled with water and then refrigerate. Doing this 20-30 minutes ahead of when you begin your preparations is sufficient, however, to be safe - you can opt for storing in the fridge overnight. Then take it out the next morning, 15 to 20 minutes early to let it get to a normal room temperature. Do remember to cover the bowl in the refrigerator to prevent everything in your fridge from smelling of onions.

If you want an easier way out in this one, you can simply refrigerate the onion without peeling 20-30 minutes ahead of the preparations.

• Cutting under a kitchen vent/fan

When you are unable to refrigerate onions, go for chopping as near as you can near the kitchen vent or fan so that the chemical released is blown away before you it affects your eyes much.

• Using Sharp Knife

Using a sharp knife to cut and chop your onions is a practical solution that can be used alone or in combination with the previous step so that the time taken for the same is reduced. When you are using an old knife it is probably taking longer and creating more damage to get through the layers of onion which in turn leads to more of those nasty tear-including enzymes releasing.

• Wearing Shades/Glasses

Another last-minute step you can take is to wear some sort of big glasses or shades that can completely cover your eyes so that the onions' chemicals are unable to cause their usual mess when it comes to your eyes. The glasses need to be a bit bigger to be able to protect your eyes. This, as earlier stated, is a method you can use when you were not prepared to chop them beforehand and need to get it done as quickly as possible.

• Under Water

Now this one is tricky, under this method - you either place an onion in a bowl of water to chop them or cut under running water. As usual, peel the onion and cut its ends then place it in either a big bowl filled with water or under running tap water, which will take in the enzymes releasing from the onion and prevent your eyes from being all teary.

This one is however definitely needs some practise and needs to be done very carefully.