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How to peel and chop an onion like a chef

  • Step 1: With the root facing up, cut onion in half from the root down to the top. Place the flat side onto a cutting ...
    Step 1: With the root facing up, cut onion in half from the root down to the top. Place the flat side onto a cutting board. Peel the onion, pulling the skin back from tip towards root. Photo: Chris Hopkins
  • Step 2: Cut off the tip of the onion (note: the root should face left (or right, if you're left-handed)).
    Step 2: Cut off the tip of the onion (note: the root should face left (or right, if you're left-handed)). Photo: Chris Hopkins
  • Step 3: Starting on the away side of the onion, slice it from the root end to the top, leaving enough onion connected at ...
    Step 3: Starting on the away side of the onion, slice it from the root end to the top, leaving enough onion connected at the root to hold it together. Photo: Chris Hopkins
  • Step 4: Make horizontal slices, from the top of the onion towards the root.
    Step 4: Make horizontal slices, from the top of the onion towards the root. Photo: Chris Hopkins
  • Step 5: Finally, cut through the onion, moving from top towards root to create dice.
    Step 5: Finally, cut through the onion, moving from top towards root to create dice. Photo: Chris Hopkins
  • The finished finely diced onion.
    The finished finely diced onion. Photo: Chris Hopkins
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  • Step 1: With the root facing up, cut onion in half from the root down to the top. Place the flat side onto a cutting ...
  • Step 2: Cut off the tip of the onion (note: the root should face left (or right, if you're left-handed)).
  • Step 3: Starting on the away side of the onion, slice it from the root end to the top, leaving enough onion connected at ...
  • Step 4: Make horizontal slices, from the top of the onion towards the root.
  • Step 5: Finally, cut through the onion, moving from top towards root to create dice.
  • The finished finely diced onion.

Andy Harmer, chef at QT Melbourne's Pascale Bar & Grill, was 16 when he left home to work at the Imperial Hotel in Devon, England in 1996. On day one he was given a five-kilogram bag of shallots to peel.

"I cried my eyes out for an hour but as I did it, I realised how the layers work, how the root holds it together," he says.

Chef Andy Harmer inside the Pascale Bar & Grill kitchen.
Chef Andy Harmer inside the Pascale Bar & Grill kitchen. Photo: Chris Hopkins

Next, he had to cut them. "That meant more tears, stabbing myself a few times and another hour," he says.

"When I finished, I showed chef proudly. He put them straight in the stock pot. Clearly they weren't good enough."

The next five kilograms – and every onion since – has been spot on.

See his step-by-step guide in the gallery above.