How to Properly Dice an Onion

This is a step by step guide on how to properly dice an onion. Sure, there are many ways to dice an onion but this on will save you time and your sanity. Not to mention diced onions that are uniform in shape and size!

For this, you will only need a few things: an onion (obviously), a knife, a cutting board, and something to put the diced onions in. This can be a bowl or the pan you will cook your onions it.

Step 1: As you should know by now, clean hands are very important when you are preparing food.

This is arguably the most important step of the whole process. There are many ways you can cut an onion in half but this is the way it needs to be done for this process. Cut the onion through both ends of the onion: the furry part and the other side (we will call this the pointy side of the onion).

Cut the pointy part of the onion off. THIS IS NOT THE FURRY END OF THE ONION! KEEP THE FURRY PART OF THE ONION INTACT. The furry part of the onion is what keeps this half of the onion together. This will help with the next step.

Take one half of your onion and peel off the first layer of onion. This is not just the papery part of the onion, but the entire first layer of the meat of the onion! You do this because what seems like the first layer of onion can often lead to a cooked paper texture when you cook the onion.

Cut slices into the onion making sure not to go through the whole onion. Leave about 1/4 inch or so between the end of your knife and the furry part of the onion. Here you can choose how thick you want your onion. If you’re unsure, you can use the natural stripes in the onion as a guide.

Be very mindful of your fingers here, no need to slice them off. Very carefully add 2-4 horizontal cuts to the onion. Just like the last step, do not go all the way through the onion. This step helps aid into the uniform sizes of the dices.

All of your hard work will pay off here. Slice the onion vertically starting at the side of the onion you have already cut off. You can also choose the size of your dices here. As you cut, the onion should fall apart into perfect dices. Continue dicing until you reach the end of your slice cuts. You will be left with about 1/4 inch of onion. This is usually tossed because this part of the onion is undesirable.

Take your perfectly diced onions and transfer them into a bowl for use later on or directly into the sautée pan! I added mine to a bowl so I could easily access them later on.

Repeat steps 3-8 for the other half of the onion. You can also store this half in a baggie for later use.

Add you perfectly diced onions into whatever you need them for. I added my onions into a fresh (and delicious) mango salsa. Enjoy!