Hey Alex! Many years ago, you were one of the many people on RUclips who taught me how to cook. Today, I'm working as a cook. I got much better with my skills due to the exposure and practice. Cutting speed and knife sharpening are two things I'm proud of and I can totally understand why you're so excited over this! I love how you obsess over every little detail on the different things you're trying to learn. If I wasn't a cook, I might have become an engineer so I guess I'm the opposite version of you. ;) I'm so proud of what you've achieved in this video. Keep the child-like wonder and excitement alive in you. We love that about you! :)
Turns out the most efficient optimization was in how you were timing yourself. If you set up a foot pedal you could probably shave off a couple more seconds.
100% moving air helps SO MUCH, i would actually cut massive amounts of onions in the walk in cooler, specifically because of the massive airflow from those huge cooler fans, also because the colder the onion is, the less of the volatile aromatic compound, that actually makes you cry, can actually evaporate/aerate. a single wet paper towel under a wooden cutting board on a decently solid metal table, is an AMAZING cutting surface. the single towel, gives the cutting board enough grip to actually grip the metal table and not move, without absorbing too much of your impact force like the rubber feet can.
Loved the illustration of the ‘1% better’ idea in multiple aspects of a seemingly simple task like cutting onions..imagine what we all can achieve if we improved 1% in different areas of our tasks!
The real optimization occurs when you consider it as a whole. Sometimes spending a little more on one step can make another step even easier, more than making up the difference. Process optimization.
it cuts the small part on the side since the sides don't have the layers since the onion is a circle. I don't if that makes sense. I usually only cut one horizontal line since the side of the onion isn't that big
Lets reduce my onion cut times by 6 seconds, for that I only need to: - Get an airblower in position and switch it on - Get a knife at the other side of my kitchen - Get a protective glove and wear it - Get a metronome (common cuisine accessory) and set it for the proper pace Seriously, I love your videos, so much fun.
I love seeing something interesting like the 1% principle being applied to something as simple as cutting an onion. Great process, congrats on the new record.
Thank you Alex for advice how to cut an union, helps me a lot in real life. CHOPING 99 PERCENT Some years later, working as sushi shef i think i found faster way. Starting position is the same. 1. Cut the cap off. 2. Cut in half 3. Position union root to myself 4. Use any chopping moove that fits BUT don't cut that 1% nearest to you. Lets say keep the knife at 10 degre angle to cutting board. Basicaly it's the same style as was used in the street. But by pointing the knife to the root onion is all conected. And that way i use the high part of the knife, that rides on my knukles of left hant. 5. Turn onion 90 degrees and make full cuts. When it's to hight near the root. Just lay it downd with the root looking up and finish the job.
Serious suggestion: shoes. Shoes are your interface with the solid ground and stability is key to many tasks; and good shows will be comfortable, allowing you to focus more effectively.
if you lined the halves up and did all the vertical cuts first you might be able to do all the cross cuts across both of the halves at the same time. 1%^
This might not help despite seeming like it should be an efficiency improvement on the surface-with the same size knife, it can slow your cuts down quite a lot more when you have double the width of stuff to cut through (and a larger knife would be slower and more unwieldly), plus you'd have a harder time holding both halves in a stable and safe way (claw grip) with your off-hand. I've never tried training the technique up with that, but my impression is that it'll be slower to do that safely and consistently than doing each half separately.
In that case, why have two halves? The whole reason for having the two halves is to separate them. But wait...now we just have that technique that he addressed at the very beginning, and found flaws with.
OMG! You are the only person to agree with me. It drives me mad when chefs and cooks tell people to cut onions and do a horizontal cut. The onion is layered already! It will already fall apart, cutting the extra time literally does not help.
I think it's because of the curvature of the onion... Even if you made evenly spaced cuts, the outside pieces of the onion will still be longer than the relatively flat middle. Hence chefs "probably" made the aditional cut to even everything out, thus creating congruent pieces... At least that's what I think.
It does help a lot if you want consistent pieces. The layers are horizontal only in the top part on the onion, but they are almost vertical in the bottom part, so without at least one horizontal cut you will get different sized pieces.
I always do the vertical cuts so that I aim towards the center of the (whole) onion a bit. So the cuts in the middle are vertical, but the ones at the sides are quite slanted. So the cuts range from, say, 45 degrees to 90 degrees. The cuts never meet, however, because I aim towards the core only a little bit. Actually I kind of point the cuts towards an imaginary point some centimeters below the cutting board. That way the results are very good and uniform, and it almost feels faster than using nothing but vertical cuts.
9:05 you create that mental image very quickly when you realize you don't need to be looking when you can feel everything. You kinda need to start over with different knives, a rounder santoku is a lot faster to find for me because it's easier to picture where the tip is. A good way to practice is slicing individual cloves of garlic as thin and as quickly as you can
you lit the fire in me cooking.. been unemployed( in kitchen , but i have a job this pandemic) for 18months now.. just cutting onions, I remember my days cutting kyuri that manner. now I'll pursue cooking in commercial kitchen again. thanx.
I have this pretty cheap cutter from China, where you put in an onion (or anything else) and just push it through a sharp grid of metal. Takes like 2 seconds or less to cut an onion. Only use it when I need lots of the same size of something, like fries, or onion soup.
Own the nicer dicer (was gifted to me). This save me literally so much time prepping food. Sure, it's not Marco pierre white super fine or precise, but for high level home cooking good enough. And I can do vegetable noodles, thin slices, ribbons, two different kinds of cubes. I love that thing
I used to watch your videos 4-5 years ago, on a different profile of mine. Now RUclips has brought me back around and wow you’ve grown! Still captivating and entertaining as always.
Let's estimate that Alex spent 4 weeks on this project. At 40 hours per week, that's 576,000 seconds. At a savings of 5 seconds per onion, after a mere 115,200 onions chopped, he will break even and start saving some time. 🤣 LOL. BTW, cool bike in the background. 👍
In my home cooking I chop about .67 onio a day. What's that, about 200 years for gains? If I was working a stall, or at a restaurant - that could be 1 year, no?
I should point out that I think it's great and totally admire that Alex practiced this much to be able to chop an onion 5 seconds faster. That's what makes this channel fun: the at time outlandish pursuit of perfection. He's an engineer. I'm sure he knows the math is silly. 🤪
About horizontal cuts. I just googled as you finally made me think about doing it, about horizontal cuts into an onion, they're needed if you need uniform cut pieces. A guy lost points on his knife cut practical in culinary school because he forgot the horizontal cuts and thus had oversized pieces.
One of the best story tellers on here. Im not a chef or good at cutting onions. But I could listen to you teaching me anout them... till the cows come home.
Wow, aren you't something Alex, from something "as simple as cutting onions", there's so much value hidden in this video, making me feel inspired and intrigued to learn more on the topic of marginal gains. Ty!
As someone who used to speedrun videogames, I know very well how shaving a few milliseconds here and a few milliseconds there can send you from an unremarkable position to the top (or near) of the leaderboard. Congratulations!
After a hard day... Who am i kidding.. Week.. Ehm.. A Month... Ok... A Year! I watched french guy cutting onions. Again!.. And i loved every second of it! Thank you Alex 🖤
The 1% approach becomes more complex and valuable when you realize that its most meaningful application with something like cutting onions comes with cutting many, many onions and not just one. For example, if you were to think about how to "shave" time off cutting ten onions or ten bags of onions, you'd have many additional areas to apply 1% improvements. When you've only got the one onion you limit the direct and indirect (unexpected) variables that you can change. However, if you were to apply the principle to an 8 hour shift of onion cutting, you'd find an additional 20-30 areas variables by which you could increase performance by 1%. To name two obvious examples: shoes and flooring. There are few physical activities that can't be improved by having the proper stance, footwear, and flooring. Try a 40 week of cutting onions (which is only 35 hours in Paris) and i will guarantee that you can cut the average time to cut an onion in half, from 20 to 10 seconds or less---and you'll be using a food processor better than anyone else on youtube.
When I worked at a pizza place many years ago we used a machine with a hand crank. You can cut them super fast but the process creates a ridiculous amount of onion fumes. Without a solution you ended up doing it for 5 or 10 minutes and then escaping to the walk in fridge to recover. I settled on wrapping cling wrap around my head over my eyes. People called me crazy.... But I wasn't going to cry about it.
Speaking as a blacksmith, you are exactly right about anvils and not wanting any play. I had to reinforce my deck underneath my anvil because otherwise, the entire floor would shake with each blow, robbing me of energy. That was an impressive bit of knowledge there.
"i need to think differently" whenever i get stuck writing code because i am tired or burn out, i get stoned and my mind opens up and i can think in 10 different ways and with that i always solve the problem 😉
Fantastic video, like normal. I worked as a GM at Chipotle for years and spent many, many hours cutting onions since all of the onions are cut in store every morning and by hand, unlike many chain restaurants. The method that I ended up employing for the original vertical cuts was to face the onion away from me (root toward me), and use the heel of the blade to make those cuts instead of the tip, using a rocking motion with no diagonal movement so as to ensure that even the parts closest the root would get a fine dice. But I would also cut on a radius so that there would be less rounded/uneven cuts from either side. Might help you get a couple more seconds
Your videos are always about cooking with extras, this video is about cooking but youve done the world a favor - this video goes way beyond just cooking and the skills here can be applied to everything. Great video monsieur Alex, bravo sir, bravo.
I am a chef at Bluebird, Chesea and I approve 👍 Bravo, Alex! PS. For chopping board stability, dampen some kitchen roll, place it under the chopping board and press down. This is standard practice in professional kitchens. Prevents slips, accidents and can be used to give the board a quick wipe down afterwards too 😊
I love the idea of this and it's much in line with my mantra in cooking. The little details all add up! Having said that. It takes about 5+ seconds to do the horizontal cuts alone so 90% of your gains were there. The other bits do all add up those 1%'s though. The sharp knife moreso
I remember seeing the original onion chopping improvement video, as my first look on this channel. I'm sure many can say the same. It has been an absolute blast since, and I have learned much from this, pushing me *further beyond* in my home cooking skills and inspiration. It's... a good feeling seeing things come full circle, as with this video. Thanks for all the content, and thanks for all the knowledge, the obsession, the fascination, and all the laughter and joy of it as well.
This was a classicly Alex video, we learnt cooking, philosophy, some life skills, went on a little journey and were entertained along the way. Thanks 😊
End-grain cutting boards are great because they tend to hold things in place and they help preserve the edge of the knife. As for that particular knife, it would be nice if the spine were rounded over and polished where the index finger comes in contact with it.
The metronome part reminds me of a guy talking about keeping good aim when shooting a gun: slow is steady, steady is fast. If you maintain a steady pace you’ll gradually see your timing improve over time
It would have been hilarious to end the video using a Slap Chop (or Veg-O-Matic or any other spring style hand powered chopper). @Alex please keep in mind for an April fools joke :)
I think that guy who was cutting onions on the street was cutting them for "Chaat" . The onions are raw and most people don't mind if they aren't beautiful and of the same size cause they will be drowned in curd and chutney anyway. It's more of a texture thing with onions in Chat.
Alex, I hate cooking. I love your videos. That says a lot about your content creating skills which are as sharp as your onion cutting skill. Well done.
Personally I use a mandoline most of the time when I'm cutting onions. However if you are going to try this and use a cutting board like this on a smooth counter top, like steel or stone, put a tea towel under the cutting board so it doesn't accidently slip. That could be really bad if you're chopping this fast and the thing your other hand is resting on unexpectedly moves.
Or just take the extra 20 seconds and do it at the pace you like. Life is not a race, especially with homecooking only the results matter, not the time it took you to prepare it.
Yes! The fan is what I use in any kitchen when I have to cut a lot of onions. I have a small, rechargeable personal fan. Great solution on demand. I think the vibration absorption of the feet is kinder to your blade edge and your joints. If you want to get faster cutting onions, buy a giant bag (the kind you find in restaurant supply warehouses), make sure you have freezer space, or a lot of people who want containers of precut onions, but that is the kind of practice needed by working cooks, not home cooks.
My job is streamlining processes, and I think you’re falling into a common trap - spending time and effort for improvements in areas that don’t really matter. How many onions do you, as a home cook, chop per day on average? One? Two? How much time will it take to recoup all that time and effort in 10 second batches? Is there a BETTER place to optimize? You could even make the argument that the chopping process itself can be a therapeutic zen moment, adding to the overall experience and happiness in your life, but not if you’re continually pressuring yourself to hit a performance target. I feel like this video has missed the soul of cooking. Something surprising from you, to me.
I think that cooking bring happiness to Alex, and the feeling of cooking and knowing that he's performing at his top level at the same time even brings more happiness to him. So it's basically a win.
I thought that too, but it’s a hobby. People irrationally spend lots of time, effort, and money trying to get better at hobbies for no other reason than they like it. Other people will spend years trying to hit a little ball with a stick, or catch a fish, etc…
@@Odinshi Well improvement in any area helps progress on any level of devleopmental process. Whether its 1% or 0.1%, improvement is improvement. If you spend your whole life thinking about the negative and not glancing at the positive youll miss the point. I think you need to improve your mind set by 1% my friend
I have to ask, genuinely, why? It's not like it's BAD to know a video is coming, and you can't tell me your time on youtube is so precious that you can't see the word "premiere" and go "oh cool, it's not out, I'll maybe watch that later or something". Just seems sorta like a you problem.
@@ppppppqqqppp see, if i didn’t see this comment, i would’ve forgotten to come back to this video. i love this channel, but i genuinely will forgot to go back
One thing you can try for the onion smell, is to put a couple of drops of thieves oil into a small dish of water and place it on the counter ,nearby. Will get rid of the vapor from the odors and save the crying.
It's the fact that this principle even works with chopping onion, Neal.... You can apply this to anything, and it goes with the intermediate to pro segment of the skill, not to the beginner to intermediate segment.
@@laiquocbao2565 yes I understand the principle and it’s a good idea. But if it takes 5 min to get ready to save 5 seconds it’s the application that I’m questioning. I’m mostly joking by the way
Love the video but….one of the most time consuming elements of preparing an onion is peeling it first. This is the bit I want to learn how to do faster. It’s not realistic starting with a ready-peeled onion.
I think you can shorten a bit more as well: cut the onion in 4 parallel pieces with the central 2 thicker. The central can be chopped easily with your classic technique, and the small curve ones are smaller and easier to chop with cross cut.
It is not necessary to cut to a metronome, you can do twice as fast evenly. Or four times as fast! *turns on metronome at 200 bpm and blastbeats the sht out of an onion with 16th notes*
I miss videos like this! Love the series that you do Alex, but I definitely miss the random videos where I feel like we’re hanging out and working on something.
I thought the last technique I learned from Alex was already very fast. Now, I’m curious what an even more faster method could be. I use the last technique I saw on Alex channel. It was already fast.
Please do a month's internship at an Indian street food stall. With shear amount of customers per every minute, u will learn automatically. U missed key ingredient of 30% improvement (cheapest thinnest knife made from hacksaw's blade used by all street vendors). That knife is traditionally sharpened against road or cement electric pole.
Considering the time he took to improve his cutting, and specially to just sharpen that knife, the net effect is that he wasted more time than a lifetime of cutting onions slower.
I wish prep time was included as in the end I am not sure all those improvements are actually improvements. Loved the video either way, the biggest take away for me was to remove the horizontal cuts
Come on, it's easy to be faster if you drop one out of three cutting steps. Taking it out will - if you take it really seriously - reduce the uniformity of the cubes. Please get back to business and create a new thrilling series for us, we are desperate to watch it!
Thumb down because of "premiere". I don't know if you realize but I'm not gonna reserve my time at when you announced video and run to watch it. When I'm in mood I open youtube and watch -nothing will change that. Going to my Subscriptions and seeing "video" when it is not video yet makes me upset.
Alleluia!!! Someone else that thinks the horizontal cuts are BS!!! If you look back, this emerged as a technique adopted by many TV 'celeb chefs' to maintain their mystique for their disciples... it is totally redundant, it just makes it look more sophisticated and more 'professional'
Love the vids alex, I cant believe that the most inspirational video ive ever watched was on youtube about chopping onions... wait no that doesnt seem verry farfetched lol
There is a better way to dice an onion for a more uniform dice. You start with a quartered onion. You make a series of vertical cuts half way across starting at the thick end. You rotate it 90 deg and repeat the process, then you slice across perpendicular to the vertical cuts.
Hey Alex! Many years ago, you were one of the many people on RUclips who taught me how to cook. Today, I'm working as a cook. I got much better with my skills due to the exposure and practice. Cutting speed and knife sharpening are two things I'm proud of and I can totally understand why you're so excited over this! I love how you obsess over every little detail on the different things you're trying to learn. If I wasn't a cook, I might have become an engineer so I guess I'm the opposite version of you. ;) I'm so proud of what you've achieved in this video. Keep the child-like wonder and excitement alive in you. We love that about you! :)
Good on you mate 👍
Very cool
Isn’t Alex an electrical engineer by trade? So maybe not so different 😄
The wholesome content i needed
Thats awesome and a beautiful story brother
Alex: Get's glasses professionally cleaned
Next scene: Wears a blindfold
Love your knifecloset!
Today at cutting an onion we will start with a tomato
@Hasnain Ali you missed the joke
Gotta KEEP those glasses clean
Don’t forget the cutting board that was supposed to improve contrast
Turns out the most efficient optimization was in how you were timing yourself. If you set up a foot pedal you could probably shave off a couple more seconds.
Just use the video frames?
That was just cheating lol, changing the method of timing to not waste the usual second moving your hand to pick up the knife…
I also thought about that, but it won't change how fast the onion gets cut
@@Vfulncchl you mean the extra sscond to move his hand away and to his phone? Not cheating in the slightest.
@@Chronos4088 how is it not biased (cheating) if he claimes 30 secs, where 2 seconds are just hand movement? Its obviously biased
100% moving air helps SO MUCH, i would actually cut massive amounts of onions in the walk in cooler, specifically because of the massive airflow from those huge cooler fans, also because the colder the onion is, the less of the volatile aromatic compound, that actually makes you cry, can actually evaporate/aerate.
a single wet paper towel under a wooden cutting board on a decently solid metal table, is an AMAZING cutting surface. the single towel, gives the cutting board enough grip to actually grip the metal table and not move, without absorbing too much of your impact force like the rubber feet can.
Love the Metronome practice at 9:40, Ling Ling would be proud!
I don't know he surely practiced this less than 30h a day. 40 or bust!
good to see fellow twoset fans spread the ling ling culture ;))
He needs to practice 40 hours a day though
Me too! Made me long for an old school metronome and not the phone apps everyone is using these days
@@michaela.754 ling ling?
Loved the illustration of the ‘1% better’ idea in multiple aspects of a seemingly simple task like cutting onions..imagine what we all can achieve if we improved 1% in different areas of our tasks!
The real optimization occurs when you consider it as a whole. Sometimes spending a little more on one step can make another step even easier, more than making up the difference. Process optimization.
Jamie claro is everywhere on RUclips - everyone is doing 1% to sell this book 🤣
Alex: “I need to think differently”
Me: *crosses fingers for a collaboration with Destin for an onion cannon*
Actually, there are some pretty cool machines who can do that, some restaurants use that to save time.
@@leocao505 they use a supersonic cannon to cut their onions? 😲
@@SA-lh7zl 🤣that would be something to see.
Hahaha, that's great!
or vince offer
I never cut horizontally when chopping onions. I feel vindicated.
I know, me too.
I never do it either. No point when there are layers there already..
I stopped a long time ago and saw that it made zero impact. It's just a dangerous addition that's non-impactful.
I only do it when I want to get the onion super fine.
it cuts the small part on the side since the sides don't have the layers since the onion is a circle. I don't if that makes sense. I usually only cut one horizontal line since the side of the onion isn't that big
Lets reduce my onion cut times by 6 seconds, for that I only need to:
- Get an airblower in position and switch it on
- Get a knife at the other side of my kitchen
- Get a protective glove and wear it
- Get a metronome (common cuisine accessory) and set it for the proper pace
Seriously, I love your videos, so much fun.
Nah, you only need to change the method in which you time yourself. That's how he ACTUALLY did it.
Ok, this book has been sitting on my bookshelf for at least two years. You've convinced me to finally read it 😂 Merci Alex!
"Perfection is lots of little things done well." - Marco Pierre White
"Perfection is Knorr Stock Cube." - Marco Pierre White
@@flobeck832 xD
I love seeing something interesting like the 1% principle being applied to something as simple as cutting an onion.
Great process, congrats on the new record.
Alex: "I need to think differently"
Alex's new earring: "I'll help distract your audience"
Us: "What?"
I wasn’t the only one!
It's the 3T road bike for me doing the distraction :-)
Totally agree!
Alex: ...He used aggregation of marginal gains...
Me: Why Alex are using an earring??
Yooo! I'm thinking of that too! Cool earring tho!
Thank you Alex for advice how to cut an union, helps me a lot in real life.
CHOPING 99 PERCENT
Some years later, working as sushi shef i think i found faster way.
Starting position is the same.
1. Cut the cap off.
2. Cut in half
3. Position union root to myself
4. Use any chopping moove that fits BUT don't cut that 1% nearest to you. Lets say keep the knife at 10 degre angle to cutting board.
Basicaly it's the same style as was used in the street. But by pointing the knife to the root onion is all conected. And that way i use the high part of the knife, that rides on my knukles of left hant.
5. Turn onion 90 degrees and make full cuts. When it's to hight near the root. Just lay it downd with the root looking up and finish the job.
I love Alex applying the "cookie clicker" principle to his cooking
Can't wait for the antimatter onions!
Serious suggestion: shoes. Shoes are your interface with the solid ground and stability is key to many tasks; and good shows will be comfortable, allowing you to focus more effectively.
Actually, your feet are the most natural interface with the solid ground. I cook barefoot.
You mean crocs?
if you lined the halves up and did all the vertical cuts first you might be able to do all the cross cuts across both of the halves at the same time. 1%^
This might not help despite seeming like it should be an efficiency improvement on the surface-with the same size knife, it can slow your cuts down quite a lot more when you have double the width of stuff to cut through (and a larger knife would be slower and more unwieldly), plus you'd have a harder time holding both halves in a stable and safe way (claw grip) with your off-hand.
I've never tried training the technique up with that, but my impression is that it'll be slower to do that safely and consistently than doing each half separately.
In that case, why have two halves? The whole reason for having the two halves is to separate them. But wait...now we just have that technique that he addressed at the very beginning, and found flaws with.
OMG! You are the only person to agree with me. It drives me mad when chefs and cooks tell people to cut onions and do a horizontal cut. The onion is layered already! It will already fall apart, cutting the extra time literally does not help.
I think it's because of the curvature of the onion... Even if you made evenly spaced cuts, the outside pieces of the onion will still be longer than the relatively flat middle. Hence chefs "probably" made the aditional cut to even everything out, thus creating congruent pieces... At least that's what I think.
It does help a lot if you want consistent pieces. The layers are horizontal only in the top part on the onion, but they are almost vertical in the bottom part, so without at least one horizontal cut you will get different sized pieces.
I always do the vertical cuts so that I aim towards the center of the (whole) onion a bit. So the cuts in the middle are vertical, but the ones at the sides are quite slanted. So the cuts range from, say, 45 degrees to 90 degrees. The cuts never meet, however, because I aim towards the core only a little bit. Actually I kind of point the cuts towards an imaginary point some centimeters below the cutting board. That way the results are very good and uniform, and it almost feels faster than using nothing but vertical cuts.
9:05 you create that mental image very quickly when you realize you don't need to be looking when you can feel everything. You kinda need to start over with different knives, a rounder santoku is a lot faster to find for me because it's easier to picture where the tip is. A good way to practice is slicing individual cloves of garlic as thin and as quickly as you can
you lit the fire in me cooking.. been unemployed( in kitchen , but i have a job this pandemic) for 18months now.. just cutting onions, I remember my days cutting kyuri that manner. now I'll pursue cooking in commercial kitchen again. thanx.
I have this pretty cheap cutter from China, where you put in an onion (or anything else) and just push it through a sharp grid of metal. Takes like 2 seconds or less to cut an onion.
Only use it when I need lots of the same size of something, like fries, or onion soup.
Own the nicer dicer (was gifted to me). This save me literally so much time prepping food. Sure, it's not Marco pierre white super fine or precise, but for high level home cooking good enough. And I can do vegetable noodles, thin slices, ribbons, two different kinds of cubes. I love that thing
You got a picture? I'm hella curious
I used to watch your videos 4-5 years ago, on a different profile of mine. Now RUclips has brought me back around and wow you’ve grown! Still captivating and entertaining as always.
Alex: "I need to think differently"
Me, literally screaming at my screen: "JUST BUILT A TOOL FOR IT"
Otter just use any good onion chopper. Quicker and very consistent.
SLAP CHOP!
What a day. Kenji Lopez Alt posted a mathematical representation of best case onion cutting, Alex upgrades his onion cutting methodology. Brilliant.
Gonna need a link to that Kenji Lopez video champ because I can't find it but I need to watch it
@@BarnyTrubble wasn't a video, it was a community post.
Leather pants Alex, they boost agility which affects your cutting speed.
Alex: I'm going to clean my glasses so I can see better
Also Alex : I will now learn how to do this blindfolded
Let's estimate that Alex spent 4 weeks on this project. At 40 hours per week, that's 576,000 seconds. At a savings of 5 seconds per onion, after a mere 115,200 onions chopped, he will break even and start saving some time. 🤣 LOL. BTW, cool bike in the background. 👍
And if you have that many onions to chop, get a machine to do it.
In my home cooking I chop about .67 onio a day.
What's that, about 200 years for gains?
If I was working a stall, or at a restaurant - that could be 1 year, no?
I should point out that I think it's great and totally admire that Alex practiced this much to be able to chop an onion 5 seconds faster. That's what makes this channel fun: the at time outlandish pursuit of perfection. He's an engineer. I'm sure he knows the math is silly. 🤪
Внезапная доска от Самуры 6:49
Alex. It seems like you may be changing multiple variables at the same time. How do you know that some of the changes might not be making you faster?
About horizontal cuts.
I just googled as you finally made me think about doing it, about horizontal cuts into an onion, they're needed if you need uniform cut pieces. A guy lost points on his knife cut practical in culinary school because he forgot the horizontal cuts and thus had oversized pieces.
That's only true for pieces smaller than about quarter inch.
I respect the incredible dedication. All those details did something, surprisingly
One of the best story tellers on here. Im not a chef or good at cutting onions. But I could listen to you teaching me anout them... till the cows come home.
Wow, aren you't something Alex, from something "as simple as cutting onions", there's so much value hidden in this video, making me feel inspired and intrigued to learn more on the topic of marginal gains. Ty!
As someone who used to speedrun videogames, I know very well how shaving a few milliseconds here and a few milliseconds there can send you from an unremarkable position to the top (or near) of the leaderboard.
Congratulations!
Cutting radially on the first section of the task may be the best of both worlds, and could add some speed there as well
now, you're my second subbed-youtuber who talked about atomic habits..you went on practical route and helps me understand more about atomic habits...
Next video : I genetically engineered a pre-chopped onion breed
I believe this is the future
After a hard day... Who am i kidding.. Week.. Ehm.. A Month... Ok... A Year! I watched french guy cutting onions. Again!.. And i loved every second of it! Thank you Alex 🖤
The 1% approach becomes more complex and valuable when you realize that its most meaningful application with something like cutting onions comes with cutting many, many onions and not just one. For example, if you were to think about how to "shave" time off cutting ten onions or ten bags of onions, you'd have many additional areas to apply 1% improvements. When you've only got the one onion you limit the direct and indirect (unexpected) variables that you can change. However, if you were to apply the principle to an 8 hour shift of onion cutting, you'd find an additional 20-30 areas variables by which you could increase performance by 1%. To name two obvious examples: shoes and flooring. There are few physical activities that can't be improved by having the proper stance, footwear, and flooring. Try a 40 week of cutting onions (which is only 35 hours in Paris) and i will guarantee that you can cut the average time to cut an onion in half, from 20 to 10 seconds or less---and you'll be using a food processor better than anyone else on youtube.
When I worked at a pizza place many years ago we used a machine with a hand crank. You can cut them super fast but the process creates a ridiculous amount of onion fumes. Without a solution you ended up doing it for 5 or 10 minutes and then escaping to the walk in fridge to recover. I settled on wrapping cling wrap around my head over my eyes. People called me crazy.... But I wasn't going to cry about it.
Speaking as a blacksmith, you are exactly right about anvils and not wanting any play. I had to reinforce my deck underneath my anvil because otherwise, the entire floor would shake with each blow, robbing me of energy. That was an impressive bit of knowledge there.
"i need to think differently" whenever i get stuck writing code because i am tired or burn out, i get stoned and my mind opens up and i can think in 10 different ways and with that i always solve the problem 😉
This particular video is so well shot and edited is amazing
Fantastic video, like normal. I worked as a GM at Chipotle for years and spent many, many hours cutting onions since all of the onions are cut in store every morning and by hand, unlike many chain restaurants. The method that I ended up employing for the original vertical cuts was to face the onion away from me (root toward me), and use the heel of the blade to make those cuts instead of the tip, using a rocking motion with no diagonal movement so as to ensure that even the parts closest the root would get a fine dice. But I would also cut on a radius so that there would be less rounded/uneven cuts from either side. Might help you get a couple more seconds
Your videos are always about cooking with extras, this video is about cooking but youve done the world a favor - this video goes way beyond just cooking and the skills here can be applied to everything. Great video monsieur Alex, bravo sir, bravo.
I am a chef at Bluebird, Chesea and I approve 👍 Bravo, Alex!
PS. For chopping board stability, dampen some kitchen roll, place it under the chopping board and press down. This is standard practice in professional kitchens. Prevents slips, accidents and can be used to give the board a quick wipe down afterwards too 😊
I still do this habitually despite being long retired from professional kitchen work
As a home cook, I usually use a paper towel.
@@DahVoozel if it's damp then it's the same thing 😉 well done
I love the idea of this and it's much in line with my mantra in cooking. The little details all add up!
Having said that. It takes about 5+ seconds to do the horizontal cuts alone so 90% of your gains were there.
The other bits do all add up those 1%'s though. The sharp knife moreso
I remember seeing the original onion chopping improvement video, as my first look on this channel. I'm sure many can say the same.
It has been an absolute blast since, and I have learned much from this, pushing me *further beyond* in my home cooking skills and inspiration. It's... a good feeling seeing things come full circle, as with this video.
Thanks for all the content, and thanks for all the knowledge, the obsession, the fascination, and all the laughter and joy of it as well.
This was a classicly Alex video, we learnt cooking, philosophy, some life skills, went on a little journey and were entertained along the way. Thanks 😊
Wait, you're cutting onions faster AGAIN?
The first video of you learning how to cut onions fast was the first video i saw. Subscribed since then.
I was thinking the same thing. Haven’t he done this video already?
look description :)
And he said that was 4 years ago. I can’t believe it!
Alex, I have been watching you for many years. And this was a fantastic video. I salute you for your efforts for this!
I guess now next video is "onion soup revisited" ;)
End-grain cutting boards are great because they tend to hold things in place and they help preserve the edge of the knife.
As for that particular knife, it would be nice if the spine were rounded over and polished where the index finger comes in contact with it.
Taught I'd learn how to cut onions, but got a life changing advice instead
The metronome part reminds me of a guy talking about keeping good aim when shooting a gun: slow is steady, steady is fast. If you maintain a steady pace you’ll gradually see your timing improve over time
Interesting. Formula One racers say you have to go slow to go fast. The ones who are still alive, anyway.
It would have been hilarious to end the video using a Slap Chop (or Veg-O-Matic or any other spring style hand powered chopper).
@Alex please keep in mind for an April fools joke :)
Or even a food processor with the slicer attachment .lol.
Was here for the original video 4 years ago. And I'm still here now. Love you, Alex!
That was an abrupt ending.
This has a lot more significance than just cutting onions. Thank you for introducing me to this Theory. I will apply it to my life
I think that guy who was cutting onions on the street was cutting them for "Chaat" . The onions are raw and most people don't mind if they aren't beautiful and of the same size cause they will be drowned in curd and chutney anyway. It's more of a texture thing with onions in Chat.
Alex, I hate cooking. I love your videos. That says a lot about your content creating skills which are as sharp as your onion cutting skill. Well done.
Sharpening your knive = 10 minutes, wear a glove = 1 minute, clean glasses = 2 minutes. Save 10 seconds cutting an onion = priceless!
Running and training for years to break a record in 10 seconds or couple of milliseconds less than that= priceless
Congratulations! This was very educating and entertaining to watch. Thank you!
Personally I use a mandoline most of the time when I'm cutting onions.
However if you are going to try this and use a cutting board like this on a smooth counter top, like steel or stone, put a tea towel under the cutting board so it doesn't accidently slip. That could be really bad if you're chopping this fast and the thing your other hand is resting on unexpectedly moves.
Or just take the extra 20 seconds and do it at the pace you like.
Life is not a race, especially with homecooking only the results matter, not the time it took you to prepare it.
Yes! The fan is what I use in any kitchen when I have to cut a lot of onions. I have a small, rechargeable personal fan. Great solution on demand.
I think the vibration absorption of the feet is kinder to your blade edge and your joints. If you want to get faster cutting onions, buy a giant bag (the kind you find in restaurant supply warehouses), make sure you have freezer space, or a lot of people who want containers of precut onions, but that is the kind of practice needed by working cooks, not home cooks.
My job is streamlining processes, and I think you’re falling into a common trap - spending time and effort for improvements in areas that don’t really matter.
How many onions do you, as a home cook, chop per day on average? One? Two?
How much time will it take to recoup all that time and effort in 10 second batches? Is there a BETTER place to optimize?
You could even make the argument that the chopping process itself can be a therapeutic zen moment, adding to the overall experience and happiness in your life, but not if you’re continually pressuring yourself to hit a performance target.
I feel like this video has missed the soul of cooking. Something surprising from you, to me.
A very interesting, thought-provoking point...
I think that cooking bring happiness to Alex, and the feeling of cooking and knowing that he's performing at his top level at the same time even brings more happiness to him. So it's basically a win.
It's pretty clear he just wanted to shoe horn this 1% concept into a cooking video, it doesn't work on many levels if you think about it carefully.
I thought that too, but it’s a hobby. People irrationally spend lots of time, effort, and money trying to get better at hobbies for no other reason than they like it. Other people will spend years trying to hit a little ball with a stick, or catch a fish, etc…
@@Odinshi Well improvement in any area helps progress on any level of devleopmental process. Whether its 1% or 0.1%, improvement is improvement. If you spend your whole life thinking about the negative and not glancing at the positive youll miss the point. I think you need to improve your mind set by 1% my friend
Love it! cheered when you hit 19 seconds. The passion is alive!
oh my god i hate these “premieres”
I have to ask, genuinely, why?
It's not like it's BAD to know a video is coming, and you can't tell me your time on youtube is so precious that you can't see the word "premiere" and go "oh cool, it's not out, I'll maybe watch that later or something".
Just seems sorta like a you problem.
@@ppppppqqqppp Because it puts it in your subscription feeds where you cant watch it then when you can its all the way down the page...
@@ppppppqqqppp He never said the opposite, he just said he hated them
@@ppppppqqqppp see, if i didn’t see this comment, i would’ve forgotten to come back to this video. i love this channel, but i genuinely will forgot to go back
One thing you can try for the onion smell, is to put a couple of drops of thieves oil into a small dish of water and place it on the counter ,nearby. Will get rid of the vapor from the odors and save the crying.
How much longer does it take to get ready to cut an onion in the improved way to save a few seconds?
It's the fact that this principle even works with chopping onion, Neal.... You can apply this to anything, and it goes with the intermediate to pro segment of the skill, not to the beginner to intermediate segment.
@@laiquocbao2565 yes I understand the principle and it’s a good idea. But if it takes 5 min to get ready to save 5 seconds it’s the application that I’m questioning. I’m mostly joking by the way
Normal shows: cooking is an art form.
Alex: what do you mean its not a sport??
Love the video but….one of the most time consuming elements of preparing an onion is peeling it first. This is the bit I want to learn how to do faster. It’s not realistic starting with a ready-peeled onion.
I think you can shorten a bit more as well: cut the onion in 4 parallel pieces with the central 2 thicker. The central can be chopped easily with your classic technique, and the small curve ones are smaller and easier to chop with cross cut.
It is not necessary to cut to a metronome, you can do twice as fast evenly. Or four times as fast! *turns on metronome at 200 bpm and blastbeats the sht out of an onion with 16th notes*
He just needs J K Simmons to yell "NOT MY TEMPO!" at him while he chops onions. 1% right there.
Imagine cutting onions with polyrythms haha
@@thereinthedeep I just did it in 7/8 but no one noticed
I laughed so much during this video! Loved the "19 seconds 59" dance
I miss videos like this! Love the series that you do Alex, but I definitely miss the random videos where I feel like we’re hanging out and working on something.
Man , you are a inspiration and always a refreshing cove by and the style of your video it me to actually make better video
I thought the last technique I learned from Alex was already very fast. Now, I’m curious what an even more faster method could be.
I use the last technique I saw on Alex channel. It was already fast.
can't believe how excited I got over a guy cutting an onion faster lol amazing video
Who’s cutting onions?
Dude. Thanks. You rock. Keep doing what you do!
Are you serious? You need to announce a basic video now?
Well you commented so its working ay
He's cutting onions, so you need to prepare by getting tissues ready for the crying.
BY FAR. the best on RUclips! Respect Alex. Cheers
Please do a month's internship at an Indian street food stall. With shear amount of customers per every minute, u will learn automatically. U missed key ingredient of 30% improvement (cheapest thinnest knife made from hacksaw's blade used by all street vendors). That knife is traditionally sharpened against road or cement electric pole.
alex is an actual genius...cooks all around the work cry their eyes out cutting heaps of onions
just blindfold yourself, no more crying !
Considering the time he took to improve his cutting, and specially to just sharpen that knife, the net effect is that he wasted more time than a lifetime of cutting onions slower.
I wish prep time was included as in the end I am not sure all those improvements are actually improvements. Loved the video either way, the biggest take away for me was to remove the horizontal cuts
Come on, it's easy to be faster if you drop one out of three cutting steps. Taking it out will - if you take it really seriously - reduce the uniformity of the cubes.
Please get back to business and create a new thrilling series for us, we are desperate to watch it!
I love your channel Alex. I find inspiration in your videos. Keep it up!
Thumb down because of "premiere". I don't know if you realize but I'm not gonna reserve my time at when you announced video and run to watch it. When I'm in mood I open youtube and watch -nothing will change that. Going to my Subscriptions and seeing "video" when it is not video yet makes me upset.
Damn you are really easily upset... Maybe see a therapist
Agree!!!
Veeeery nice video full of value. Definitely worth watching! Thanks Alex
Love the video and love your content. Easily one of the best food/cooking channels on the platform.
Lol, you had a running start with the last one. Congrats though. Love your dedication to improvement 👈🏽🙌
Did you say “the pain of my existence”? It’s bane of my existence. 🤣
Alleluia!!! Someone else that thinks the horizontal cuts are BS!!! If you look back, this emerged as a technique adopted by many TV 'celeb chefs' to maintain their mystique for their disciples... it is totally redundant, it just makes it look more sophisticated and more 'professional'
The one chef knife I bought during my trip to Japan was exactly that Misono. I have used it for years and I love that knife.
Love the vids alex, I cant believe that the most inspirational video ive ever watched was on youtube about chopping onions... wait no that doesnt seem verry farfetched lol
This video was phenomenal, thank you!
There is a better way to dice an onion for a more uniform dice. You start with a quartered onion. You make a series of vertical cuts half way across starting at the thick end. You rotate it 90 deg and repeat the process, then you slice across perpendicular to the vertical cuts.
Glad I watched it till the very end. 😂 This method of self-improvement is amazing, thank you for showing it, Alex!
I remember watching that video when you uploaded it and seeing how much you've grown is amazing. LOVE IT ALEX. also looking good lol