My tender eyeballs
I love onions.
Sadly, onions hate me.
I have tried every trick I have heard to reduce onion-related eye pain (burning a candle, wearing goggles, holding a piece of bread in my mouth), and it is still an irritating experience every time. Last night I caramelized onions for French onion soup, and it was so bad that I was getting stabbing pains in my brain. I remember times when I was a kid that my eyes would burn at night, and I didn’t realize at the time what was causing it, but I bet it was when my dad cooked onions.
The only trick that does work is chilling the onions beforehand, but unfortunately I’m not organized enough to plan my onion-cutting more than about two minutes in advance. I get these onion urges, see? When I get a compulsion to cook with onions, I just can’t wait for them to sit in the fridge for an hour.
Is it ok to store onions in the fridge? I always keep them in the onion drawer. It seems a shame to render my onion drawer useless. I guess I could keep something else in there.
Alternatively, does anybody know any strategies that actually work?
Do you wear contacts? Contact lenses are a great deterrent to lacrimal leakage while chopping onions.
I realized, quite by accident one day, that wearing my contacts eliminated the problems normally associated with cutting onions. So I guess the next logical step for you is to go out and buy some over-the-counter contacts and wear them exclusively for onion cutting. Another option might be to cut up about a dozen onions at one time and freeze them; you’d initially cry a river, but then you’d be free of tears for many meals thereafter.
Post the french onion soup recipe, please!
We keep our onions in the refrigerator and don’t seem to have any troubles.
Sadly, I am cursed with near-perfect vision, so contacts aren’t really an option (neither are adorable glasses, unfortunately). I think I will try Melissa’s suggestion.
Google turned up something about swimming goggles and a can of beer, if you’re still looking for ideas.
If nothing else, that’s a good photo op. I’m sure Denny would be thrilled.
do you have a food processor? you could chop the onions with that. ive never found anything to work – goggles, breathing through mouth, breathing through nose, holding breath completely, etc. one thing that has worked for me to get the tears to stop is sticking my face in the freezer for a few seconds.