When Onions Annoy

  • This message board permanently closed on June 30th, 2020 at 4PM EDT and is no longer accepting new members.

not_nadine

Comfortably Roont
Nov 19, 2011
29,655
139,785
Behind you
th
 

Walter Oobleck

keeps coming back...or going, and going, and going
Mar 6, 2013
11,749
34,805
In high school, we had pasty sales to help finance a senior class trip to Florida from the U.P. of Michigan. A pasty is something the Cornish miners brought to this area, a hearty meal they carried into the copper mines, a meal consisting of a crust folded over a layer of meat, potatoes, rutabaga, carrots, and onions, baked, the top of the crust brushed w/butter. They'd heat their pasty with their lamp, the pasty on the blade of their shovel. That part of the story sounds fishy, but that's how the story goes. Anyway, we'd head out one weekend to gather orders, next weekend or starting before we'd begin making the pasties, anywhere from 700 to a 1,000 at a buck a pop. Now I think they sell for no less than 4 and usually more. Imagine a stainless steel bowl large enough to wash five babies. Full of white onions. Three or us there with choppers you'd push into the pile. This was out in the hallway near the Home Ec room. Talk about tears. Florida was a blast...twelve out of class of twenty-four went on the trip.
 

Walter Oobleck

keeps coming back...or going, and going, and going
Mar 6, 2013
11,749
34,805
I've got a union of garden onions in a drawer in the fridge...white and yellow...there might be a purple left. They haven't procreated...but when the snow finally melts in the back yard, I suspect I'll see some green shoots rising from the soil...onions that hid when I was harvesting them. Too, the greens are tasty early one before they get woody, thick, tough to chew. The greens are tastier than the bulb I think.
 

hossenpepper

Don't worry. I have a permit!!!
Feb 5, 2010
12,897
32,897
Wonderland Avenue
To stop the tears from chopping...

Put the onion in the freezer for about 15 minutes before you chop it. This keeps the sulfoxides from converting into the chemical that causes the burn.

Another, easier trick is to hold an unused matchstick with the flammable end outward between your front teeth. This absorbs the gases as they release.

I've tried both and they work quite well. I also have a small tabletop fan in my kitchen. Turning that on blowing across the cutting board also works pretty well.