Help! How Do You Control Onion Skin Clutter?

published Feb 16, 2011
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(Image credit: Emma Christensen)

Onions are one of our favorite vegetables to eat…and least favorite to prep. Their papery, flaky skin just seems to get everywhere. The same goes for garlic, for that matter! We’ve figured out a few strategies over the years for dealing with it, but we’d love to hear yours.

When it comes to peeling onions and garlic, we actually take a page from Rachael Ray’s book and use a Garbage Bowl (nothing

fancy

Something else that helps with onions in particular is to trim off the very top of the onion and then slice the onion itself in half through the root before peeling. This makes the outer layers a little easier to separate from the parts we want to keep.

Other than this, we keep a kitchen towel handy while we’re peeling. Before moving on to actually dicing the onion, we’ll give the cutting board a quick wipe to clear away any errant onion skin clutter.

How do you keep onion and garlic skins from getting everywhere?