Sour Potatoes

I recently heard an old wives tale that says the best way to avoid crying when you’re cutting an onion is to hold a matchstick in your mouth while you cut it. Immediately, I was intrigued by such a claim. My common sense told me this made no sense. What complex chemical properties or sword fighting skills could a matchstick possess and how could it possibly provide any kind of protection against the perils of onion juice and the inevitable tears that would follow? Were these, perhaps, magic matchsticks, made from trees cut from an enchanted forest where the fairies never cry when they slice up onions for their fajitas? And would I really want to chop up an onion with a stick hanging out of my mouth, not even a toothpick, a matchstick. What do I work at the bowling alley?

Recent (quick internet) research on the matter dredged up every opinion under the sun. Some folks were skeptical, feeling that the match was more of “Dumbo’s Feather” than any kind of real remedy, others swear by it, citing the sulfur base of the match head as its secret ingredient. Some people use a combination of tricks, first submerging the onion in water, then lighting a candle, holding a matchstick (or a piece of bread) in their mouth while wearing very expensive, William-Sonoma onion goggles (that is a real thing). The scientific community (and by that I mean a blog post entitled, Chopping Onions and Pragmatism) seems to think that none of these solutions really works at all, except to say that some of them may help a bit by slowing the time it takes the chemical irritants to reach your mucus membranes. For instance, when you put a matchstick or a piece of bread in your mouth, you force yourself to breath through your mouth and prevent the enzymes from entering your nose, or by putting onions in the refrigerator, freezer, or running them under cold water, you may make the chemical reaction less potent. Many culinary experts say that by simply lighting a candle or by lighting a gas burner and (carefully!) cutting the onion next to the stove, the flame will draw some of the gas released by the onion.

Well, skeptical as I was, I must say that putting a matchstick in my mouth really DID work for me! Do I know why? I do not.

But I do know this, I see a long and productive future for the matchstick and I, for at our house there are always onions to be chopped and now I don’t have to turn on the water works to do it!

Let me know how it works for you!