Cutting Onions So They Cook Evenly
Okay, so we've done spices, we've done ginger and garlic. Now we're finally getting to the onion, which is honestly the base of almost everything we're going to cook the rest of this course. Curry, dal, doesn't matter — most of it starts with onions in the pan.
And here's the thing that trips people up: it's not really about how finely you cut the onion. It's about cutting it the SAME. If you've got some pieces the size of a fingernail and some the size of a marble, the small ones burn before the big ones even soften. Then you've got bitter bits mixed into your base and you don't know why it tastes off.
I didn't figure this out for a long time, which — we'll get to that.
The cut I actually use
Most of my curries and all my dal want a small dice, roughly like the size of a pencil eraser, sometimes a little smaller. Here's how I get there without measuring anything, because I don't measure onions, ever.
- Cut the onion in half through the root end, not across the middle. Leave the root on for now — it's what holds everything together while you cut.
- Peel each half.
- Lay it flat side down on the cutting board so it doesn't roll around on you.
- Make horizontal cuts, parallel to the board, from the top down toward the root, but don't cut all the way through the root end. You're basically slicing it into layers while keeping it in one piece.
- Make vertical cuts the same way, top to bottom, again stopping short of the root.
- Then cut across, from the top down. The onion falls apart into even little pieces because you already did the work in step 4 and 5.
That's it. It sounds like a lot of steps written out, but your hands figure it out fast. After two or three onions you stop thinking about it.
If a recipe calls for a rough chop instead — some of our curries in later classes want bigger pieces that we're going to blend into a sauce anyway — then the evenness matters less. But for anything where the onion is staying in the final dish, even pieces really do make a difference. Not a huge one. Just enough that I think it's worth the extra thirty seconds.
Why this actually matters for the cooking part
When we get to building the base, you're going to cook these onions low and slow until they go soft and golden, sometimes almost jammy, before the spices go in. That takes anywhere from ten to twenty minutes depending on your heat and how much onion you've got in the pan. If your pieces are uneven, some hit that golden point while others are still raw and crunchy in the middle. You end up either pulling the pan too early, so half your onion's undercooked, or leaving it too long so the small bits scorch.
And scorched onion in a curry base is not a great flavor. It's not the good kind of bitter. It's the kind you can taste for the rest of the dish.
Which, actually — this is where I have to tell on myself a little.
Oh my heck, the cumin
Early on, before I really trusted myself in the kitchen with this stuff, I was toasting whole cumin seeds — this was way back, one of my first tries — and Axel and Jose started fighting in the other room, the way brothers do, over something monumental like a video game controller. I went to go break it up, figuring thirty seconds, no big deal.
It was more like three minutes. I came back and the cumin was black. Not dark, black. The kitchen smelled like a campfire, in February, in Utah, so obviously I couldn't just open a window and air it out in ten minutes — I had every window in the apartment open and I was standing there in a coat waving a dish towel at the smoke detector.
I bring that up here because it's the exact same lesson as the onion thing. Anything in a hot pan needs your attention, not just your timer. Onions won't go from fine to ruined in ninety seconds like cumin will — you've got more room with onions, which is part of why I like starting beginners there. But the principle's the same. Uneven pieces plus a moment of not paying attention is how you get some parts perfect and some parts burnt in the same pan.
So: cut them even, and then actually watch the pan while they cook. I know "watch the pan" isn't a very satisfying instruction. But it's most of the job.
A couple of practical notes
- Onions make your eyes water worse at higher elevation and in dry air, which, hi, we live in Utah County, that's us. If it's bad for you, a sharper knife actually helps — a dull knife crushes the cells instead of slicing them, which releases more of the stuff that makes you cry. Chilling the onion for ten minutes before cutting helps some people too. I haven't found it does much for me personally, but it's cheap to try.
- Watch your fingers on the root end. That last little chunk you're holding onto to keep the onion together is also the part where people cut themselves, because your grip gets more awkward as the onion gets smaller. Slow down for the last few cuts. There's no prize for finishing the onion fast.
Before next time
Practice the dice on one onion before class if you get a chance, just so your hands aren't learning it for the first time in front of everyone. And it's fine if it's ugly. We've all cut an onion that looked like a crime scene. Mine still do, some days.