Chopping an Onion

You'll need:

• An onion
• A sharp knife
• An adult to handle the knife!

We always let an adult use the sharp knifes. And because onions are so nice and round they are especially hard to cut. Our guest mom, Ms. Diane, showed us how her dad would chop onions in his restaurant.

An onion is a globe so we're going to use some geography terms to help us tell you how to handle an onion.

1. Cut the onion in half, right through the equator.
2. Take the onion halves and cut the North and South Pole off.
3. Now, lay the two hemispheres, equator-side down on the board.
4. Cut the hemispheres into slices.
5. With one hand on the handle and the other on the dull edge, near the tip, start chopping by picking the knife up and bringing it down on the sliced onions. Don't lift too high.
6. Chop toward you, then away from you. You want the pieces to be about the same size. This is called "coarsely chopped."
7. To "finely chop" the onion use the tip of the knife as a pivot point, keep one hand there. The other hand will move the handle, up and down in a chopping motion and at the same time move around in an arch. Chopping one way and then another until the onion is the size you want.