At some point I started running cold water on the knife before cutting and onion, and it seems to help. Does anyone know if there’s science behind this, or am I making shit up?
Maybe it lubricates the knife so that it crushes fewer onion cells. That is the reason a sharper knife also works. Or the water dissolves part of the escaping gas. I think it might be both.
my guess would be that it dilutes the stuff in onion cells that reacts and creates the irritating gas, and maybe even prevents the reaction from happening or just dissolves the gas into the water instead
At some point I started running cold water on the knife before cutting and onion, and it seems to help. Does anyone know if there’s science behind this, or am I making shit up?
Maybe it lubricates the knife so that it crushes fewer onion cells. That is the reason a sharper knife also works. Or the water dissolves part of the escaping gas. I think it might be both.
Others in this thread have pointed out that running cold water over your arms helps. So maybe while you wet your blade, your arms get wet too…?
my guess would be that it dilutes the stuff in onion cells that reacts and creates the irritating gas, and maybe even prevents the reaction from happening or just dissolves the gas into the water instead