What's BEST WAY to DICE AN ONION?

Noticeably absent is the "Chop sloppily, then keep chopping the messy pile you've made on your cutting board, until you have a million random shapes that are finally about the right size" technique. This method has never failed me.

I usually just go for the lazy dice for two main reasons: 1: It's the fastest and I just want to minimize the amount of time I spend cutting onions. I didn't enter the kitchen just so a bloody vegetable could break the geneva convention by attacking me with chemical weapons. 2: I'm really not comfortable with the horizontal cuts in the traditional dice. It seems like an really easy way to also dice your left hand which would probably ruin the taste. It also just tends to fall apart for me, resulting in a worse and less even chop than just the lazy method. I guess this might have something to do with how sharp the knives in my kitchen are, but I mean, they cut things alright. But they aren't quite scalpel levels of sharp where it basically meets no resistance. Besides, the onion is already doing a fine job at being chopped horizontally just by having those layers.

The most important part about dicing an onion is realizing the onion isn't an onion. Its... An onyo.

In the video you referenced, Marco actually uses the "lazy" dice, his reasoning being that when you cut an onion as finely as he does, there is no discernible difference between 2 cuts or 3 cuts. The dice he is looking for is so small that it easily melts in a hot pan, and adding an additional slice at that point simply wastes time. Following that advice, I use the lazy dice for my onions, and go for thin slices. The uneven chunks that occur in your version don't happen, you save a lot of time, and you don't have to make an awkward sideways cut.

I use the lazy because I don’t really give a shit. I’m not cooking to impress people, I’m cooking to feed myself good food and slightly more uniform diced onion pieces won’t matter when I’m done making fried rice. If I really need finely diced onions I’ll just do smaller cross cuts.

I got in the habit of using a radial cut and for most things it's perfect.

Whichever method you use, the layer next to the "paper" layer should also be discarded for most recipes. The taste is quite a bit different.

As a side note for the radial version: Kenji said (somewhere in his POV-series; can't remeber the exact video though...) that you should not actually cut to the center of the onion half but to an imagined point below the cutting surface for maximized evenness.

You forgot another cut, called the Crying Onion Cut. It's where you use a butter knife

I happen to call the "lazy" cut the "I cut myself doing the horizontal cut on the three way dice and don't want to do that again."

I’ve always wondered why methods always suggest doing the vertical cuts before the horizontal. For me it makes sense to the horizontal cuts first while the onion has a stronger structure so there is less chance of slippage.

Growing up in a restaurant family, the method taught to me by the Chinese chefs reverses your radial cut and makes it easier and faster: prep the onion into halves as you showed. Then cut it into slices that are essentially the same as the final slice of your traditional and radial methods. This leaves you with a stack of slices. Push that stack of slices over like a set of collapsed dominoes so they are mostly flat on the board, but still laying on top of each other. Now make the radial cuts downward into the cutting board. The knife angle changes to different clock positions, but in this case the clock is laying flat on the cutting board. Every cut is made with the knife travelling vertically and straight into the cutting board. This method avoids those non-vertical cuts in the traditional and radial methods, which can be awkward for some.

Obviously you haven't seen a random indian guy chopping an onion blindfolded.

"Marco Pierre White or something" oof how can you not know the man who made Gordon Ramsey cry.

I mostly use the “lazy dice” after years of doing the traditional way, it was actually Racheal Ray who changed my mind. I saw a video of her showing that the horizontal cuts were totally unnecessary and it just clicked.

As a CIA graduate, why in gods name does it teach us to cut downward first? It's infinitely easier and more precise to do the lateral cuts first

I think there is nothing lazy about understanding the structure of the onion and knowing that I will get the same cuts without horizontal strokes of the blade.

Watching this video reminded me of recent reading on how trees are processed at the sawmill. The Plain sawn, rift sawn, & quarter sawn methods are almost identical to the dicing methods presented in this video.

I started the radial dice in the 70’s when I did my own cooking. As much time as I spent in the kitchen watching my mother and grandmother, I don’t recall their methods. The radial made more sense when I observed the natural structure of the onion. Isn’t it strange the habits we learn, and how we adhere to traditions.

When it comes to the traditional, I always do the cuts parallel to the surface first. That way the onion stays together a bit better, and I have greater control over the size of the dice.