One of the big ones was eating pomegranates by opening them underwater. For those not familiar, pomegranates have a lot of red seeds and white husk between them:

Cutting a pomegranate or even opening a pomegranate tends to burst at least some seeds. The seeds are sticky and stain and tend to spray juice when pierced.

However, if you just cut through the outer hull of the fruit, then open it by hand underwater in a bowl of water, any juice that would have sprayed out is just grabbed by the water. Even better, the (inedible) white husk floats, so it self-separates instead of sticking to everything.

Today, I decided to try eating a watermelon with a spoon. In the past, that's tended to also make things spray, so I tried a grapefruit spoon, one with serrations that runs down the side. And that works great -- the spoon is like a knife, can go more-cleanly through the watermelon than a regular spoon, and still lets you scoop up the watermelon.

Any other neat tips that might be unorthodox or that people might not have tried or know about?

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[–] tal@lemmy.today 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I understand that water reacts with it too -- that is, the gas that it releases reacts with the water in your eye, so if it reacts somewhere else, that'd be better. I've seen a recommendation to cut it under water. That seems like too much trouble for me, but I at some point in the past, I did start quickly rinsing the onion after the first cut so that there's water on the onion and knife and cutting board, and it does seem to significantly reduce the impact; it's never really been a problem since then.

kagis

https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/59688/why-does-cutting-onions-cause-tears

Propanethial-S-oxide is the major cause of the flavor and aroma of onion. However, it is a volatile compound i.e. vaporizes very quickly.

when propanethial-S-oxide comes in contact with cornea, a small amount of it reacts with water to form sulfuric acid. This sulfuric acid is the cause of itching and irritation in eyes due to onion.

Looking elsewhere, I also see a couple recommendations to chill the onion in a refrigerator prior to cutting it, and several webpages saying that it worked well for them.

https://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/cooking-tips-techniques/how-to-cut-onions-without-crying

I left the onion in the refrigerator for 24 hours and then peeled and chopped it like usual. No tears! No burning! I cut the entire onion without needing to grab a tissue. While I felt a slight irritation in my eyes towards the very end, overall it was painless. I was surprised this method worked so well since onions aren't a produce item that generally need to be refrigerated. However, if it helps prevent blubbering, I'm all for it.

I'm not sure what's going on here. I saw one page that said that it makes the gas coming off the onion cooler, so it drops away from your eyes. Not sure if that's the actual mechanism, and I've never done it myself.

Some people may plan ahead well enough to be able to refrigerate their onions in advance of needing to chop them; I'm not really that organized, myself.

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, the water thing just doesn’t work. You dice onion on a cutting board, not in a sink.

The other tricks take more effort than grabbing my helmet.