Cooking has its pitfalls: accidentally burning your hands, dropping your food, and worst of all (maybe): onions making you cry. But there’s a solution to that last one. That’s right, here are a few things you can try to avoid crying when chopping onions.
Open a Window
One of the only ways you can be sure that an onion won’t make you cry—at least not too much—is to open a window while you chop. That’ll give the fumes somewhere to go other than straight into your tear ducts. You can also stick your head out the window from time to time to get away from the onion smell.
Breathe Through Your Mouth
They say that onion makes you cry when you smell it, so to avoid too much of the onion fumes permeating into your nose, you can make yourself breathe through your mouth. If you’re finding it hard to force the mouth-breathing, you can always sing a song while you cut your onions, which will get your mouth open more.
Freeze the Onion
One of the most effective ways to avoid onion tears is to pop your onion in the freezer for ten minutes or so before you chop. Just don’t forget to take it out! A frozen onion is no fun.
