Rachael Ray Says Suck It Up and Cry While You’re Chopping Onions
It seems like the older I get, the more likely I am to cry at car commercials, at greeting cards, and at whatever random rom-com I watch during an overnight flight. And this year’s World Cup has sent my lacrimal ducts into overdrive: I’ve sniffled through Iceland’s Coca-Cola commercial (which was directed by the team’s goalkeeper), welled up watching Hirving “Chucky” Lozano score that goal against Germany, and practically sobbed listening to Mo Salah explain why he feels like he has 100 million Egyptians behind him.
All of this weepiness probably has a downside, but Rachael Ray thinks I should embrace it — especially when I’m chopping onions. In a recent post on Rachael Ray Every Day, she decried (no pun intended) the existence of Sunions, a kind of onion that has been developed through “old-fashioned cross-breeding” to be less pungent and reportedly tear-free.
“No, no, no! You should suffer for your art. Chop the onion. Cry,” she insists. “People will do the dishes for you.” (I’ve yet to experience this tears-for-dishes trade-off, Rachael. Can you please explain how that works?)
Earlier this year, she responded to a viewer’s letter about the correct way to chop an onion by admitting that she “does not correctly chop an onion.” To do it her way, she suggests slicing the onion in half first to “make it flat,” cutting the onion’s root end off, then peeling off its papery skin. She cuts the onion in thin slices along its longest side — from what she calls its “hair” to the end that you’ve just removed. That’s it for sliced onions, but she spins it sideways and makes a few more cuts for diced onions. (Around the 2:40 mark, the studio audience enthusiastically applauds a diced onion, which is quite possibly the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.)
Regardless of how you chop an onion, she says you’re going to cry. “You cannot cut onions without crying. People […] soak the onions in water, which just takes away a lot of their flavor, they put them in the freezer,” she gripes. “Just suck it up and cut the onion. Get it over with!”
And if you’re like me, there’s a good chance you’re crying about something else anyway!