Learn How to Cut an Onion in 15 Seconds

Meet Alex, a Frenchman and very accomplished home cook who's always looking to make the most delicious food as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. On his YouTube channel French Guy Cooking, Alex documents his culinary experiments and adventures, which have so far included making his own sourdough starter, inventing a dry-aged beef machine, and even producing his own wine.

Sometimes, Alex tackles kitchen basics rather than these grand experiments, and even though he's more than proficient at the classical French slicing and dicing technique of chopping an onion, Alex is convinced the process can be faster. (Dicing a whole onion in 29 seconds is plenty fast, if you ask me, but then again, I'm not Alex—much to my chagrin, believe me.)

So in this video, Alex learns how to chop an onion faster, eventually shaving a cool 14 seconds off of his onion-cutting time. He drew inspiration from a YouTube video of a man cutting an onion while blindfolded in mere seconds. The secret to making this onion-cutting hack work without cutting your fingers in the process? Swapping out a traditional chef's knife with a longer, thinner knife. That way, you can use the tip of the knife can guide you through the onion, and the high angle makes it hard to accidentally slice through your finger. It sounds complicated, but as he shows, it's really straightforward albeit a little messy.

And that's the main downside to this trick. Chopping onions with a long, thin knife is faster, but it's also less precise than the classical French method. You can't make all of the pieces the same size, if that's what you're looking to accomplish. But if speed is your style, and you just need a roughly chopped onion for a soup or a hash, you might want to give this onion-cutting hack a shot.

If you want to learn how to chop onions quickly, like Alex, watch the full video, below: