Food There is a special tip for cutting onions that helps you survive without crying – HS found it working and the expert was amazed

Eyes stings and tears run down the cheeks: this is a familiar feeling when many onions are chopped.

The reaction is due to the fact that the onion cell breakage produces a sulfur compound that irritates the eyes and mucous membranes, which evaporates into the air and ends up in the eyes, says a university lecturer in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Helsinki. Markus Metsälä.

Is it possible to chop the onion without tears?

The first thing to do is make sure your kitchen knives are sharpened. A sharp knife breaks the cell less than a dull one, which also reduces the amount of weeping compounds in the air.

You should also pay attention to the cutting style. Incisional cutting cries less than crushing an onion.

However, in addition to this advice, you can find many of the most special tips online to avoid eye irritation. HS Food Delivery selected five of them and tested the functionality of the advice.

“Cool the onion in the freezer before chopping”

According to the advice, put the onion in the frost for 30-60 minutes before chopping. In the test, the onion was in the freezer for more than half an hour.

In the test, the cold seemed to help with some eye irritation, but did not keep the stinging completely out in the end.

From a practical point of view, this tip also feels awkward: it’s hard to always remember to put the onion in the frost for about half an hour before cooking.

“Place wet kitchen paper on the edge of the cutting board”

The video service Tiktok spreads a hint that it is possible to avoid tears if you place a wet sheet of kitchen paper on the edge of the cutting board, next to the onion.

In the test, however, that advice did not work, and the eyes began to irritate at the beginning of the operation.

“Put the candle on the edge of the cutting board”

According to this special-sounding tip, a burning candle prevents eye irritation.

In the test, a table candle was placed next to the top left of the cutting board.

Surprisingly, that advice worked best. The eyes were not irritated – and the candle created an atmosphere for cutting the onion.

Caution should be exercised when testing this advice with fire.

“Keep a piece of bread in your mouth while chopping”

Keeping bread in your mouth while cutting an onion feels like weird advice.

While taking the test, the tip still felt insane, and didn’t help prevent the feeling of eye irritation.

“Cut the onion under the cooker hood”

According to the advice, the eyes will not be irritated if the onion is cut under the hum of the cooker hood. The fan is said to absorb disturbing fumes from the cutting board into the flue.

In the test, the tip seemed to help with stinging a little, but did not prevent eye irritation completely.

Best the test therefore includes advice on burning a candle and freezing the onion.

According to Metsälä, the momentary freezing of the onion is likely to help because when the onion is cold, the reaction that produces an eye-irritating compound slows down and, on the other hand, at low temperatures, the compound also evaporates less into the air.

According to Metsälä, explaining the candle trick is more difficult.

“The only explanation I came up with is that the warm air generated by the candle flame creates an air flow that directs the eye-irritating compound away from the cutter. You would think that a cooker hood would do the same thing more efficiently. ”

Metsälä says that he tested the candle trick himself.

“Based on the small sample, it, amazingly, seemed to help.”

Metsälä reminds that of course there seem to be differences between the bulbs in terms of eye irritation, so it may also be a coincidence.

“A systematic study of the phenomenon would require the chopping of quite a lot of onions, and unfortunately there is no use in the ordinary household for a very large amount of onion crumbs.”