How to dice an onion

Every once in awhile, I notice that I take for granted a technique that is highly non-obvious. How to dice an onion is one of them. There is no such thing as a chopped onion: these are only irregularly diced ones.

Dicing an onion takes seconds and results in pieces so small that they are sure to dissolve into flavor-enhancing invisibility as a soup or stew progresses.

As with my other explanations on knife skills, this description is no substitute for classroom instruction and I am totally not responsible for you cutting yourself if you choose to try this.

Always use the end of your knife that's furthest from the handle--at least the last third, if not the last sixth. This gives you far more control.

DIRECTIONS:

1. Hone your chef's knife with a steel.
2. Begin breathing only through your mouth. Don't breathe through your nose for even a second until you're done dicing.
   
3. Cut the stem end off of your onion. Cut a portion of the root end off, being sure to leave the root intact.
4. Cut through the two ends of the onion such that half of the stem end and half of the root end remain in each of the hemispheres. Remove the skin.
5. Turn your knife at an angle tangent to the hemisphere (such that it points to the middle of the onion), beginning almost parallel to the board at the far right side of the onion. Cut almost all the way through the onion, but do not cut through the root. This will hold the onion together and make it easier to dice. Make incisions in 1/4" increments.
6. Turn the onion 90 degrees and slice it into 1/4" slices. The onion will instantly fall apart into tiny pieces.
   

Voila!

How to crush garlic

I didn't know how to do this properly, either, until I took a knife skills class recently. The thing to keep in mind is that garlic does not produce allicin, the compound that gives it its spicy taste, until the clove is damaged. That's why "Chicken with 42 Cloves of Garlic" isn't spicy at all: the cloves are left whole and unpeeled while cooking.

On the other hand, the more you break open the clove, the more allicin will be produced. So maximum pungency is produced by completely smashing the garlic. If you do this wrong, however, most of the juice will just wind up on the cutting board.

DISCLAIMER: This description is for informational purposes only and is no substitute for classroom instruction. You use knives at your own risk. There is always a risk of cutting yourself when using knives, especially with advanced techniques such as this one. I absolutely do not take responsibility for you cutting or injuring yourself.

1. Separate the cloves you are planning to use.
   
2. Cut the stem end of each clove off, leaving the root end intact.
   
3. Lay your knife flat on top of the clove. Strike the side of the knife with a sharp blow. (Obviously, your hand shouldn't be anywhere near the cutting edge.)
4. The peel should come off the shocked garlic very easily; remove it.
5. Slice each garlic clove along the grain as thin as you can, but without cutting all the way through to the root end. This will cause it to hold together, making it easier to chop.
6. Turn the clove 90 degrees and slice again, this time going all the way to the end. You will have tiny sticks of garlic.
   
7. Sprinkle a bit of salt over the garlic cloves to reduce stickiness. (Whatever you're making with the garlic will probably need salt anyways.)
   
8. Finally, mince all the cloves briefly by repeating the slicing motion.
9. Once the pieces are very fine, lay your knife flat against the cutting board, with the sharp edge facing your dominant side. (If you're right handed, the blade should be to the right.)
10. Slowly drag the knife right-to-left (if right handed, or left-to-right if left-handed) over the garlic, keeping it as flat as possible over the cutting board. Repeat as necessary until the garlic is totally crushed.

Crushed garlic cooks much faster than minced garlic, so keep your eyes open.

A Note on Schmaltz

A few weeks ago, I was describing something that I made to someone and mentioned schmaltz. "Come on," he said, "now you're just making stuff up."

Schmaltz is rendered chicken fat, and it's a fundamental ingredient in Jewish cooking, as goose fat is in Polish cooking and lard is in (very non-Jewish) food from the American south. (Lard, incidentally, is called khazer schmaltz in Yiddish and is used in unflattering expressions about ideas that are foreign in origin but are presented as Jewish, like a drummer at shabbes services.)

Anyways: schmaltz is easy to come by if you ever make broth. The fat on a chicken is not a single, uniform substance, but is made out of many different molecules with different properties. Schmaltz, like ghee ("clarified" butter) consists of the fat that turns into a liquid at the lowest temperatures.

By far the easiest way to get schmaltz, at least in my life, is to carefully skim it from chicken broth after it's prepared. It will rise to the top naturally, and will be all the more easy to remove if you let the broth cool in the refrigerator first. Schmaltz keeps very well in the freezer and can be warmed easily in the microwave.

If you don't make much broth, there are other strategies to extract it available, and you can also buy it pre-packaged at kosher delicatessens.

Schmaltz is what gives Jewish foods like matzo balls and knishes their signature flavor.