Shoutout to the line cook who showed me I was slicing onions all wrong

I've been cooking professionally for about 7 years now, and I thought I had onion prep down. This new kid, maybe 19, watched me for 30 seconds on a busy Friday night and just goes "you're fighting the grain, man." He showed me how to cut from root to tip instead of across, and my speed jumped from like 3 onions a minute to maybe 6 or 7. Same knife, same board, just slicing with the natural lines. Has anyone else had some young rookie teach them a basic trick that made you feel like a fool?

4 comments

4 Comments

shane7512d ago

Nah, I'd argue slicing across the grain gives you better texture for certain dishes where you want the onion to hold its shape.

king.aaron2d ago

@the_ben might have a point but honestly at this point I'm just here for the onion drama. Does Mandy need a support group or what?

anna5672d agoTop Commenter

My friend Mandy is a total stickler about onion prep in her kitchen. She spent years thinking she knew the right way to cut them until she tried making a French onion soup for a dinner party. She sliced everything pole to pole like everyone said, but the onions turned into a mushy mess instead of those lovely long strands you see in the pictures. Turns out she had been accidentally cutting them wrong the whole time, and she was so mad about it. She called me up that night just to vent about how her fancy soup turned into onion paste.

the_ben2d ago

Yeah, you're mixing up the terms a bit. Slicing across the grain usually means cutting perpendicular to the muscle fibers in meat, not onions. For onions, what you're describing is cutting pole to pole (through the root end) which keeps the layers intact and gives you those nice long strips that hold up in cooking. Slicing across the equator gives you rings that fall apart more easily.