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Comment by repiret | Hacker News Reader

There are three tricks to chopping an onion quickly:

1. A sharp knife. This is a must for just about anything in the kitchen. While the price tag of a name brand German or Japanese knife might scare you off, a $5 Kiwi #171 knife from Amazon or eBay can serve you well, and will kick the pants of the knives found in a lot of home kitchens.

2. Don't cut the root off until the very end. If this were a decade ago, I'd write more about technique, but the reality is you're better served by watching a few someones do it on youtube than reading what I type.

3. Practice.

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4. Don't screw around with a chef's knife for cutting a large root vegetable. Buy a chinese vegetable cleaver. Weight matters when cutting through thick veggies, even with a sharp knife. A cleaver adds the weight for you and gives you a convenient bench scraper for collecting the veggies to add to whatever bowl you're keeping them in.

My experience is that a brand of knife is less relevant than having a good sharpening tool that can be used instantly to regularly sharp the knife. Surely a knife with good balance and grip helps, but any knife requires regular sharpening, German or Japanese.

Probably it is too obvious to you, but I want to point out even good German knifes need to be sharpened regularily. (Just a few pulls through the knife sharpener). I know people who do not do that and are suprised that the knifes do not cut that well.

At least for me (or is it the onions we have?), peeling the onion is the tricky part and takes as much time or more as chopping the onion, and cutting off the root helps with that.

It is a good thing to have a sharp knife if you are into making food from scratch, because if you are, you will be using the knife a lot.

Also, know the difference between honing and sharpening.

The edge of a knife is very fragile, because it is very very thin. As such, when you use the knife's edge, it will eventually "bend over".

A honing edge straightens the edge again. That's not "sharpening", its just pushing a stick against the knife edge to realign everything. It will cut better once you hone it.

https://www.globeequipment.com/learning-center/wp-content/up...

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"Sharpening" is when you remove metal from the edge of the knife.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0001/8425/4516/files/messe...

Honing should be done every time you use the knife. Sharpening should only be done every month (if you use the knife a lot) or once every year (if its a rarely used knife)

And #3 is about 95% of it, like most of cooking.

Best practice - get a bag and make French onion soup. By the 4th onion with a YouTube video with proper technique you will be screaming fast comparatively. And French onion soup is delicious

No amount of practice will make you proficient with a dull knife.

Ceramic knives cut through onions like butter.

Special mention for the peculiarity that Kyocera makes amazing ceramic knives, and on the subject that Peugeot makes amazing salt and pepper grinders.

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