Knowledge Base > Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Half Hour)

Ask Me Anything (Office Half Hour)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Half Hour)

This event was on Tuesday, October 03, 2023 at 2:00 pm Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern

Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to cours… Read More.

Recorded

Question:

How do I chop onions without tearing up so badly?

— Lori Everling

Answer:

So this is a common occurrence with, uh, with onions. It's actually the gasses that are being released off of the onions after they've been on the ground for a long time now because those are the gasses that are released off of those, uh, one of the best ways to avoid them is to get rid of the gases, and you can do that through a couple different ways. Um, you can put a fan in your kitchen by where you're cutting, so it'll be blowing by to be able to blow those gases out of the way. Um, set up your cutting board near your exhaust fan by your stove. So, um, the exhaust fan will actually waft the gases away from your face. Um, I do hear people saying like, you can freeze the onion for like 10 minutes or so. Um, that'll, uh, you know, change the texture a little bit, um, if you do it too long. So I don't usually do that. I usually try to do something like a fan or the exhaust fan is probably my best suggestion for that. Um, and you know, it does happen to everybody and you always cut into one of those onions every so often where you're like, holy cow, this is one of those onions. So if you're doing that, just uh, try to make it so you have a little bit of airflow where you're cutting those up so it doesn't go directly into your eyes. Hope that helps. Laurie.
Dan Marek

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

rouxbe.com