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HUFFINGTON
03.17.13
FOOD
WEAR SWIMMING
GOGGLES
METHOD: Thinking that maybe
the Onion Goggles didn’t have
a tight enough seal, I tried
intense swimming goggles out
for size as well.
RESULTS: Pretty much
the same deal as the Onion
Goggles, only more so. That’s to
say, if you put them on before
chopping, you’ll be 100%
protected from crying. But if
you put them on mid-chop,
you might as well be watching
Terms of Endearment.
WEAR ONION GOGGLES
METHOD: Wear official Onion Goggles, like these ones from RSVP, which were
purchased at Sur La Table for $22.95, while chopping onions.
RESULTS: Here’s the deal with Onion Goggles: You have to commit. If you start your
chopping session wearing goggles, they work great. But if you start without goggles,
chop a few, then put them on, they’re awful. In this latter case, they strangely made
my eyes sting more, not less — perhaps they decrease the amount of air circulation in
my eye socket, intensifying the tear effect of any irritants already in the air.
USE AN ONION
CHOPPER
METHOD: Use a mechanical
chopper designed specifically for
onions, like this $13.11 one from
Progressive, to dice your onions
with one firm press of the arm.
WENDY GEORGE
RESULTS: Though this has the
same caveat as the other two
“machines,” it’s by far the best
among them. As long as you put
a little elbow behind the press,
you get a clean, delicate dice
of onions, without any tears
whatsoever. The only problem
was that it was slightly hard to
clean. Still, a winner.
USE A VEGETABLE CHOPPER
METHOD: Use a
top-pressing chrome
vegetable chopper, like
this Cook Pro Chrome
Vegetable and Onion
Chopper, $16.16 on
Amazon.com, to chop
your onion.
RESULTS: The three
machine-based methods
all share one fatal flaw:
you have to peel and
halve the onion before
using them, which puts
you at risk for a few tears
right away. But this
one has the additional
drawback that it doesn’t
work properly. It just
wouldn’t chop the onions
properly. At all. Who
cares about crying if you
can’t get a proper chop?