Onions come awfully close to salt or oil in the frequency of their use. Go read some boxes, cans, seasoning bags or refrigerated packages and you’ll see them everywhere. They possess an unnerving versatility, like sociopaths happily fitting themselves into dance classes just before they massacre everybody in the ballroom.  Depending on how you cook them onions alter texture, add pungency or dampen it, lend sweetness, impart sharpness, or bolster any savory stance an otherwise bland food might be trying to make.

Peeling Them – Roll the onion around a little with slight pressure from the palm of your hand to loosen the dry skin. Slice one end almost all the way through, leaving it attached by a little bit of the outermost layer and the skin. Slice the other end, beginning from the opposite hemisphere, and leave some attached as well. Pulling on these dangling ends will give a good head start in to removing the skin. For any skin that doesn’t come off easily, rub it with the side of your thumb.  Don’t bother trying to work a fingernail or a knife under the skin as you’ll probably just gouge into the flesh while busting up the continuity of the peel.  When all else fails, remove the outermost layer of onion flesh and go from there.

Onions & Crying– The tear factor.  Tough to escape this problem. Onions are rife with sulfur compounds. I actually read an article (in 2004) which attempted to pinpoint the exact chemical responsible for the tearing effect of onions. There were chemicals with 30 letters in their names and somebody probably got government grant money to research it. But the long & short of all of it this: onions have sulfur compounds which shed sulfate ions into the air, hit the water on your eyes and form sulfuric acid. Which stings because it’s hurty and makes you cry.

Getting used to this is harder than, say, getting your hands used to being burned. But getting around it isn’t so tough.  Try one or more of these techniques to get around the eyeball agony. 

-Ventilation.  Keep air circulating when you’re cutting onions. Preferably away from you; don’t stand with the onions between your face and an open window.  If you have a fan, position it so it draws air IN from the direction of the onions and away from you.

Wrap your head in clear plastic food wrap (from at least the eyes up, but try not covering mouth & nose at the same time…) Think I’m nuts? There was a cook at Zibibbo in Palo Alto, CA who did it every day & seemed happy with the results.  Which leads me to this suggestion :

Nothing to cry about

Sweating Onions and other vegetables.  Use the microwave. Microwaves are an underappreciated culinary tool. Their use is widespread but people are not inclined to think of them when preparing snazzier recipes. But they heat oil extremely fast.  If you toss your onions, garlic, bell peppers, etc. with some oil and nuke them for a minute you will get nicely softened, translucent vegetables. If they’re not cooked to your needs, keep zapping them in 30 second increments. And since you’re not cooking them over a heat source in a metal pan, they won’t burn so you don’t have to pay attention…  Or maybe they will burn, but only if you were to try cooking them for a much longer period.  Which you won’t need to except for, maybe, the sake of science.

Kinds of Onions –