Week 2 Gordon's training video: How to chop an onion

Date Published:

20/10/2008

Chopping an onion is an important skill to learn since it is the basic ingredient of many dishes. In this video Gordon will impart his Michelin starred knowledge so that you can learn to chop an onion like the professionals do, shaving minutes off your cooking time

It’s vital that before you start you have a knife with a sizeable, flat blade. In order for this technique to work, the knife has to be sharp. If it isn't, it will be twice as hard to chop your onion. See Gordon's video on how to sharpen a knife.

Place the onion on the chopping board and slice off the top of the onion. Leave the root on for now because this will hold the onion together whilst you are chopping it.

Remove the papery skin and any brown outer layers.

Chop your onion in half from the root to the base. Put the cut side down and make a number of vertical cuts towards, but not quite reaching, the root.

Lightly grip the onion on top to stop it separating. Turn your knife so that it is at a perpendicular angle to how you've just been cutting. Rotate it through 90 degrees so the blade is now horizontal to your chopping board and start cutting through the onion, again, not quite reaching the root.

Holding the onion with a firm grip, turn the blade of the knife so you are now chopping on to the board, but across the first set of cuts you made. The onion will fall away in small pieces as you go. Continue cutting until you reach the root, which you can now discard.

If your onion starts falling apart, don’t panic. Just cut as much as you can. Now take the rest of the onion and then pivot the knife, rocking it backwards and forwards over the already chopped onion. Use the knife to gather all your onion back together and repeat the rocking motion until the pieces are all the same size.

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