Cutting onions is one of the most challenging cooking tacks for most people as this seemingly simple piece of work end with tears. Sometimes we even ask ourselves whether the tears we shed are worth it of having onions in our lives. The answer is yes, but it would still be nice to cut it without crying. Luckily, there are many tricks and tips that can help you have a much more comfortable onion-cutting experience. Most of them are helpful, including these and these, but there is one hack that stands above all the rest.
Freezer Comes to Help
Next time before you start chopping the onions, pop them into a freezer for 30 minutes. While this will get them a bit chilled, which shouldn’t be an issue if you intend to cook them, it will also remove the crying factor from the equation.
The reason why we cry while cutting onions is the chemical background. When cut, onions release enzymes that react with sulfur-rich amino acids and create sulfenic acids. These acids then rearrange into a chemical known as syn-propanethial-S-oxide that gets released in the air and causes eye irritation and tears.
Freezing onion slows down the reaction between enzymes and sulfur-rich amino acids, delaying the release of syn-propanethial-S-oxide just enough for us to emerge unscathed after cutting.
