How do you cut onions without crying?

Question

Actually, I only asked this because I was bored and it's the question on the Yahoo Answers ad but thanks for all the replies!

Answer 1

Cut the onions under water

Answer 2

Some other suggestions people have mentioned for preventing tears when working with onions include:

Keep the root on while peeling and chopping. A variation of this is to cut from the top leaving the root end intact until the last cut!

Be in a well-ventilated place and cut fast!

Use a good, sharp chef's knife. It glides through the onion with ease, allowing less of the compounds that cause tears to come out.

Wear a pair of safety goggles or a cheap, disposable painter's mask.

Put a slice of bread in your mouth, with half of it sticking out to "catch" the fumes.

Put some white vinegar on the chopping board before cutting.

Burn a candle immediately adjacent to where you're cutting. The tear-causing gas is drawn toward the heat source.

Purchase pre-chopped onions.

Answer 3

Keep the root on while peeling and chopping. A variation of this is to cut from the top leaving the root end intact until the last cut!

Be in a well-ventilated place and cut fast!

Use a good, sharp chef's knife. It glides through the onion with ease, allowing less of the compounds that cause tears to come out.

Wear a pair of safety goggles or a cheap, disposable painter's mask.

Put a slice of bread in your mouth, with half of it sticking out to "catch" the fumes.

Put some white vinegar on the chopping board before cutting.

Burn a candle immediately adjacent to where you're cutting. The tear-causing gas is drawn toward the heat source.

Purchase pre-chopped onions.

After cutting the onions (and garlic), a suggestion that may help remove the smell from your hands is to run cool tap water over your hands while rubbing them across a stainless steel utensil, such as the bowl of a stainless steel spoon. If you have been cutting a lot of onions, this may not be as effective.

Answer 4

do either of the following:

When peeling and cutting onions, light a candle or two in your work area. This helps to cut the fumes emitted from the freshly-cut onion that causes all those tears to well up in one's eyes.

If you put the onions in a freezer just before cutting them, it decreases the vapour pressure of the volatile components, and hence fewer of the tear causing molecules get into the air.

Alternatively, cutting onions under water allows the volatile components to dissolve in the water, so again they are removed and are unable to reach your eyes.

Answer 5

wear goggles bread doesn't work and how can sucking a spoon possible help hydrochloric acid which is made from the onion vapour and your eye gunk so lighting a candle did some one get the idea in the 1950's when they saw some one with candles around them while cutting an onions Der it was so they could see not to protect there eyes.

Answer 6

You need to put the onions under cold water and let them sit for a bit then cut them...
Another trick is keep the onions in a refrigerator and slice them...
That also works..
If you do start crying dont wipe your eyes that is the worse thing to do...
Step into a cold place the stingin willstop...

Answer 7

i put onions in the fridge for a couple of hours before i cut them. then i run them under water while i get the icky stuff off them and ready to cut.
i usually use a chopping bowl...a glass bowl with a lid you screw on that has a blade on the lid. you just pump the handle down to slice up the onion.
if i HAVE to cut onion for burgers or something with a knife...i do it under running water.

Answer 8

It's something like you don't cut the bottom of the onion open, cos that's where the stuff that makes your eyes water is.

Answer 9

cut the onion into two and put in salt water for 5 min after that cut them

Answer 10

I have always heard that if you peel the onion under running water your eyes will not water - but I have never heard about the chewing gum before - I will have to try that!@