Halve the onion through the root and leave the root on. It is the hinge that holds the layers together while you cut. Cut lengthwise towards the root without going through it, then across. The dice falls off the board already made. The chef skips the horizontal cuts and says the layers do that job for you.Tears come from crushed cells. A sharp knife and a slicing stroke crush fewer of them than a blunt knife pushed straight down. The drama, he says, is always the knife.A generic chef's clip, under a minute, saved on a Tuesday evening because I had just cried over a dal with my left hand taped and wanted somebody to blame. I showed it to Emil Reuter at the counter the following week, expecting approval. He watched eleven seconds and said the grip is wrong. The chef in the clip holds the knife by the handle with a finger laid along the top of the blade, which looks precise and steers like a shopping trolley. Emil's version: pinch the blade itself between thumb and the side of the forefinger, just in front of the handle, and wrap the other three fingers round, so that the knife becomes part of the hand. The other hand is a claw, knuckles forward, fingertips tucked. The clip gets that right, he allowed.Then he made me do six onions. One sentence of explanation and then the work, as usual. The cutting pattern from the clip is still the one I use for 🪁 Cooking on weeknights; the grip is Emil's. And the point about sharpness sent me to the job I had been putting off: 🔄 Sharpen the kitchen knives. Fewer tears since. Not none.
