Praise be to onions

Here at Chez Allison, we use a lot of onions -- chopped for soups and stews, diced for beans and chili, and sliced for burgers and sandwiches. I reckon that I go through a bag of white onions every week. And that's an average week. I might go through two if at any time during the week I'm entertaining. I hate to think what my kitchen table would be like if onions were to suddenly disappear.

I don't remember when I first developed a taste for onions. I do know, however, that I was very young when I did. I was also very young when my grandmother taught me how to slice and chop onions. Thus, when my childhood chums were eating baloney sammiches with cheese, I was eating baloney sammiches with sliced onions, which I'd sliced myself.

Techniques for chopping/slicing onions differ among chefs. The one consensus you will find, however, is the need for a sharp - and I mean sharp - knife. Start hacking away at an onion with a dull knife and you just might lose a digit. Same goes for those God-forsaken serrated knifes. To borrow a phrase from my grandmother, those damn things need to be thrown in a gully.

I've never been very impressed with Chef Tyler Florence cookbooks or television shows. He does have a good onion-chopping technique, though. Check it out here.