> It turns out that making horizontal cuts almost never helps with consistency.

They made the horizontal cuts evenly spaced between the cutting surface and the top of the onion, which is nonsensical to me. I believe that a single horizontal cut at around 15-20% height would be better for uniformity than a horizontal cut at 50% height.

▲

jaxn 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Which is exactly how I was taught to do it while working in kitchens 25 years ago.

The other thing is that this seems to ignore that the onion is round in the other direction too. As far as I can see, it only covers the first dice cut.

	▲	dcrazy 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		The planar cuts just determine the thickness of the dice. You just want to make them equal to the thickness of the rings.

▲

wkcheng 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, that's the way that I cut onions: you make vertical cuts followed by one single horizontal cut slightly above the cutting board.

This way of calculating doesn't take into account the creative ways you can make cuts. You could also do mostly vertical slices, and then slightly angle inwards when you do the final few cuts. That would get you a more optimal distribution as well.

	▲	jillesvangurp 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		A lot of people insist that this is the way. However, at some point, I figured out that making the horizontal cut (or cuts) before you make vertical cuts is a lot easier. You can do it by simply putting the onion with the root on the board and cutting down at an angle of about 5-10 degrees. When the tip of the knife hits the board, simply don't press down all the way to keep the root intact. Then put it down normally and make the vertical cuts. You can easily manage 3 or 4 horizontal cuts this way. And there's no awkward cutting towards yourself with a sharp knife. All this business of first making lots of vertical cuts and then attempting a horizontal cut is a lot more fiddly. The vertical cuts affect the structural integrity of the onion. This makes the horizontal cuts harder. And it also makes the process of dicing harder. Of course, as the article points out, the horizontal cuts don't really do much that a chef should care about. You can dice an onion super fine with just vertical cuts very close together. And it's a lot faster and easier. You might angle some of the cuts towards the edges. But honestly, even that is unnecessary and a bit overkill. With a good knife, you can put the vertical cuts really close together. So close that any kind of angle would mean the cuts cross each other. Once you are that close, a horizontal cut really does not matter. And if you do a rough cut, the size matters even less. If you are interested in this topic, there's a French chef on Youtube called Jean Pierre who is full of practical wisdom and techniques. You can learn a lot from him. And he's highly entertaining to watch too. He's very opinionated on onions. Or Onyo as he pronounces it. You won't see him making horizontal cuts, ever.

▲

indy 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes! They had all those visualisations and you could see the problem areas from vertical slicing were at the bottom of the onion, a couple of horizontal slices down there would have given the best solution.

▲

4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

▲

RataNova 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Evenly spaced horizontal cuts might make sense from a modeling standpoint, but not from a practical one. In real-life onion dicing, no one's slicing horizontally all the way up like that, it’s usually one or two low cuts to help break up the base

▲

ethan_smith 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A single low horizontal cut (15-20% from bottom) specifically targets the elongated base pieces - this would likely outperform the evenly-spaced horizontal cuts they tested while remaining practical for home cooks.