Knowing how to slice, cook your onions makes big difference
Back in the '80s and '90s, I used to work behind the scenes with Julia Child during her appearances on "Good Morning America." It was my job to prepare the food she would put before the cameras.
Once, when I knew in advance that I couldn't be there for one of her upcoming appearances, I invited a pal of mine - a culinary professional - to try out for the gig. We prepped the food as usual, and at the end of the day I thought my friend had done a dandy job. Julia flatly disagreed and said she wouldn't hire her. I was flabbergasted. "Why not?" I asked.
"Because she sliced the onions the wrong way," Julia replied.
Yikes! I simply hadn't focused on how my friend sliced the onions. I didn't think this detail was that important. But all these years later, I realize Julia was right. Exactly how you slice an onion makes a difference. So does how you cook it.
Everyone knows that chopping onions can literally bring tears to your eyes. Here's why. When an onion's cells are ruptured, they give off pungent sulfur fumes. The more roughly an onion is treated - such as when it is chopped with a dull knife or pulsed in a food processor - the more fumes it gives off.
There are any number of quaint folk remedies for this problem. Put a piece of bread in your mouth while you're chopping. Do your chopping near a running faucet. And so on. None of them works.
What does work - at least when you're chopping up a lot of onions - is wearing onion goggles. Modeled on welder's goggles, these babies prevent the onion's fumes from reaching your eyes. But the best everyday tactic is to chop or slice the onion quickly and with a very sharp knife. Chilling the onion for an hour or two ahead of time also is a good idea.
Having managed to blunt an onion's ability to bring you to tears, let's turn to the correct way to slice one, a la Julia. Lengthwise, not crosswise, is the way to roll. Cutting an onion in half through the root end and then slicing it from stem to stern stimulates far fewer sulfur fumes. These lengthwise slices also happen to hold together much better than crosscut slices, precisely because you've sliced with the grain instead of against it. This is especially important for a dish like onion soup, when you want the slices to maintain their shape.
Finally, we come to how to cook an onion, which affects not just the flavor of the onion, but of the whole dish. If you throw it into a hot pan and quickly saute it over high heat, the onion and the dish it's added to will be bland. If you do it slowly over low heat, you'll maximize the onion's flavor.
All of these tips apply to making my Alsatian onion pie. The French call it tarte flambee. The Germans call it Flammkuchen. It strikes me as more like a pizza than anything else. I tasted it for the first time on a river cruise in France a couple years ago, and I was really knocked out by its combination of simplicity and big flavor. Accompanied by a fresh salad, this treat would make the perfect light supper for the beginning of spring.
• Sara Moulton is the host of public television's "Sara's Weeknight Meals." She was executive chef at Gourmet magazine for nearly 25 years. Her latest cookbook is "Home Cooking 101."