Ow

[simont]

Nasty cuts on two fingers of my left hand today, after an onion-chopping accident – two layers of the onion unexpectedly detached and slid along each other, one carrying the knife with it.

This is the second time in recent years that this has happened; when the current cuts heal, the scar on my middle finger will sit next to a suspiciously similarly-shaped one on my index finger from 2009. Onions were the culprit on that occasion too.

So perhaps, for my own safety, I should invest in a gimmicky kitchen gadget for chopping onions. A quick google this morning suggests that there are several quite different-looking designs, though, and I'm not at all sure which is likely to be most effective…

Comments

[pseudomonas]

Not suggesting that you not get a chopping gadget (my mother always does onions in a food processor), but more generally the knife-skills videos here might be useful, since there'll always be a need for knives.

[holdthesky]

Is it that your kitchen is awash with onions or that you suspect them of being remarkably trecherous vegetables? ie P(onion) or P(cut¦onion)? Either way a gadget would be good. If the former, though, throughput and convenience might be good criteria to ensure the gadget isn't abandoned, if the latter, the most cunning might be best sought, even if inconvenient?

[simont]

I meant the latter: onions seem particularly prone to these sorts of slippages.

I've always found onion-chopping to be especially annoying and tedious, so I'd guess it's unlikely that I'd abandon a gadget once I had it – it really wouldn't take much for it to be easier than the alternative! It's the activation energy to choose and buy one that I mostly need :-)

[crazyscot]

A Japanese mandolin, obviously. ;-)

[sunflowerinrain]

I fixed my onion-chopping problems by giving up onions.

This one is said to be good - http://www.lakeland.co.uk/12336/Kenwood-Mini-Chopper;jsessionid=70F1991166F74417BE770BB8A37B7404.app2

I'd rather have something non-electrical. On my wishlist - http://www.headcook.co.uk/alligator-onion-chopper.html

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

Ow :( But surely your chopping technique might be as much to blame as the knife? Next time you're cutting something rapidly, try doubling over the fingers holding it down to the board, so that your knuckle rather than your fingertip is closest to the knife. This is a chef trick to stop you cutting off the end of your finger when chiffonading lettuce or whatever. It feels awkward at first, but does enable you to snatch your hand away faster and minimise injury. Much easier to demonstrate than to describe...

[simont]

I'm sure you're right that there are chopping techniques that wouldn't cause this problem. But I've tried to develop them before, and find myself gradually falling back into old habits sooner or later. I was very careful with onions for several years after the 2009 incident, but last night shows that it didn't last forever :-/ So a technological fix seems more likely to be reliable, in my case.

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I really like mandolins for cutting rapidly and evenly, but if you catch yourself on them they are a lot more vicious than knives. Brilliant for when you have to cut 3kg of cucumbers for pickle or a buffet, though.

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

Also, once you have a mandolin you can claim to be a freedom fighter (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXKa3H-jREM) (music).

[songster.livejournal.com]

What's your onion-chopping algorithm? I've had fewer mishaps since I started leaving the root end on the onion right up to the end of the process, since it holds the various layers together.

[simont]

Hmm, I don't think I've tried that.

I was also wondering about turning the half-onion over so that I'm cutting into the flat side rather than the sloping side that a blade can slide down.

However, since I'm trying to reduce my accident rate from a current level of one every few years, it might take a while before I find out whether a new technique really helps, or just feels as if it stands to reason that it ought to :-)

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

This. Also, make sure your knife is really sharp. A sharp knife needs to exert less pressure to cut, which reduces the risk of either the knife or the onion slipping. Also, cuts from sharp knives hurt less and heal better.

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

Very true.

[gerald_duck]

On the other hand, are there not important nerves near the knuckles? Certianly, A&E was checking me over quite carefully when I sliced one.

[gerald_duck]

Whoops!

I have geek cred: the scar on the back of my left thumb came from trying to strip insulation from the middle of a piece of flex.

My instinct (prejudice?) is to suggest going to John Lewis to buy a gimmicky kitchen gadget that will actually work, whereas Lakeland would sell you an excitingly shaped plastic thing that's not actually as robust as an onion.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

We got a particularly bad vegetable-chopping gimmicky gadget last Christmas. Sadly I can't remember what brand it was to warn you off it, as we threw it away[*]. It had a grid of blades in a circular frame, which you bring down at an angle onto a cutting surface, which has a grid of grooves matching the position of the blades. A bit like a mandolin but in 2D. It was explicitly designed for onions among other things. However, the very first time we pressed the blades down onto half an onion, several of them either bent or broke, and the onion merely got slightly squashed.

[*]Oh, wait, we still have the instruction leaflet. It was called a "Dicer +", no other brand name visible. Can't find it on Google. It looked very similar to this "JML Nicer Dicer" (http://www.jmldirect.com/uk/food-preparation/nicer-dicer/invt/n01nd20100000001/), but maybe that one is made of better quality materials.

[simont]

Sounds like more or less the sort of thing gerald_duck is worried about above! I shall make sure 'must have Mohs hardness superior to even an above-average vegetable' is on my list of criteria :-)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

If you're pressing hard enough to make the layers come apart that fast you definitely need to invest in the gadget called a knife sharpener!