I bought pre-sliced onions at the supermarket last time I went food shopping. Just because it was totally stupid, and i wanted to know what it felt like to buy onions someone had thoughtfully chopped for me and placed inside a little plastic tub.
They were $1.73 for .6 lbs. By way of comparison, Fresh Direct will deliver uncut onions to your house for $1.99/lb. That means you don’t even have to get off the internet and they will bring an onion to your door for less than what this bucket of onions will cost.
So what was it like, to be among the group of what some call fools, others, visionaries, who buy already-chopped produce? In some ways, it was like a small luxury, like I had opted to buy Bass instead of Coors. Even within the confines of the experiment, a small part of me felt like I was clever, that I found some way to one-up the salad system. And within two days, I had made myself a salad and eaten it, whereas sometimes all the salad fixings rot before I get a chance to make a salad.
Even still , it was an extravagance, and one that I won’t be repeating. I have no problem chopping my vegetables. In fact, I enjoy it, the raw tactility, the pleasure in making something for oneself, the fact that I’m not paying $2.89/lb for onions…
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@teh: Doesn’t work for me. Been trying it for years.
Our town’s recycling doesn’t take those plastic tubs; only plastic bottles (in addition to the cans, glass and paper).
So those onions would be particularly wasteful here.
This makes sense for two reasons:
1) You save time.
2) At $2.89/lb, it’s cheaper than what you pay at Whole Foods salad bar ($6.99/lb)
@Eyebrows McGee: Get one of those OXO choppers (the kind they sell in Bed Bath and Beyond for like $9). You just slam the whole onion under it, pop the top up and down a few times, and voila! Chopped onion that you never touched directly (and you can use a knife to scoop them up and transfer them directly to your food. I love this, because I also hate the onion hands.
Also, I agree that usually frozen/canned/prepared fruits and veggies suck compared to their fresh counterparts, but I also agree that if they’re going into a cooked dish (not used as a side dish on their own), the frozen stuff holds up well flavor-wise in cooking. I usually use frozen asparagus or peas in my risotto, for example, and I can’t say I can detect a difference when I use fresh (could be all the wine…hmm).
I find that chopped onions, even when stored in the fridge, start to smell really, really crazy strong. Is it just me?
Here is a no-tears and super fast way to chop onions:
Step 1 – Buy a sharp knife. It’s safer to have a sharp knife than a dull knife, and your life will be so much easier.
Step 2 -
Yikes…link below:
How to cut onions
In the long run, it’d be more cost-effective to buy a small food processor. I got a high-quality one and it’s definitely paid for itself in chopped onion and minced garlic prices, not to mention all the other stuff.
@Eyebrows McGee: That’s actually really clever. I’ll have to remember that next time I want half a cup of something.
@BigNutty: Because all the people who whine and complain about Consumerist doing “frivolous” articles don’t pay any attention to the “serious” ones when they do show up, so Ben can tell that they don’t mean it.
I ran across a rev’n chef for $3 on clearance about a year ago and it chops onions fast and tear-free and without electricity. Just zip-zip-zip the string about 10 times and you’re done.
I have worked in grocery stores for ages. I have to say that you should use the pre-cut items from the produce dept as soon as possible. They’re not using the pretty stuff to make the pre-cut items.
Ahem. “Bass instead of Coors”? Life is too short for bad beer, Ben.
Go to the supermarket and buy onions for $.99 a pound and cut them yourself. Then add the $1.89 a pound savings to your beer budget and drink something that doesn’t have to be the coldest beer in the world to be remotely swallowable.
I have bought both and fresh cut onions (you cut yourself) usually taste better and last longer.
That being said Trader Joe’s used to (not sure if they still do because of some recall) sell bagged diced onions for 99 cents–I think you get a pound–much cheaper than the price listed here.
It won’t work if you want to use them uncooked, but I always dice up 6-10 at a time, spread them on plastic wrap on a cookie sheet, freeze them, and then crumble them into a bag that I keep in the freezer. Saves a ton of time when I’m cooking and I can use the cheaper bagged or bulk onions. I’ve also done this with celery and green pepper, works for cooking but not for salads.
I’ve also gotten cheap bananas and watermelon, pureed them and frozen them in ice cube trays then stored in a bag for future smoothies. There are lots of ways to store that marked-down produce, even if you can’t eat it all fresh.
My mother’s a nurse, and therefore, I have the best solution for onion hands: wear latex gloves!
@gingerCE: these onions?
@headon: i know what a sweet onion looks like. i went to college in a region known for sweet onions and i’ve eaten them fresh in the middle of harvest season. they are great to eat, but they DO have a different flavor-profile and DO have a higher water content than the brown onions you typically buy (that can be stored over the winter because of their lower water content).
@Glaven: trader joes usually has little bags of trimmed baby vegetables (including summer squash, beets, green beans, depending on their availablity). you may just find your spruitjes there.
Did I just read that much about onions?
Yes. Yes, I did. And I learned that I am not doing it right.
I’m sad.
I had problems as well with chopping my vegetables, so I got myself the ultimate kitchen gadget: a wife!
@VARCO
I haven’t seen ‘em yet, but I’ll keep looking (and hoping)!
I did find baby iceberg lettuce heads last time, and those are just charming.
Speaking of onions and convenience, I was in the Safeway in a high-end area of Denver, and I was looking for white onions. The only ones they have are peeled and they are $2 a piece.
I do alright, but I’m not paying $2 for an onion…
Give me old-fashioned do-it-yourself vegetables please…
precut onions, not so much, I could definitely see myself buying precut butternut squash. I love them but they are so hard to cut and peel and the last time I made butternut squash soup I almost stab myself. That is the type of cooking luxury I can get behind…
The main question is how small the onion cubes are. I can cut onions down to a certain thinness, but not beyond that, and sometimes you do need the really tiny bits as garnish.
I would suppose that the mechanical stuff that they use can do it for you, with less chopped fingers.
More plastic packaging, more dependence on oil…
A couple of you mentioned this above: spring for a good knife.
I gutted and replaced my kitchen this spring. Then got a famous German-brand (I’m not a shill) 10″ chef’s knife. Turns out, the kitchen was a waste of thousands of dollars — all I needed was the knife! (well, hem, haw, and a little bit of technique, thank you, Alton Brown).
I always would use the food processor, but it was always a pain in the behind due to cleaning, drying, and storing again. The knife gets a quick sponge, quick dry, and back in the drawer. I can’t remember the last time I used it for chopping or dicing.
I still prefer the garlic press to mincing, though.
Also, in combination with the knife the other, best partner is my cheap, Ikea cutting mats. They’re flexible, conform to the sink, and dirt cheap. This is handy to avoid cross contamination. While I love the performance of my huge wooden cutting board, it has some of the same laziness problems as the food processor.
We like to buy the small (not pearl, not cambray) bags of white onions at the Mexican grocer, so leftovers isn’t normally a concern. When I want a yellow onion or Vidalia, the leftover lasts long enough to use in a baggie in the fridge.
Now I’ve got to make a decision, inspired by a lot of you folks above: is it wasteful or advantageous to cut up mass quantities of onion and mirepoix to freeze, in order to use at will? It’d be a lot easier! I groan at the use of so many baggies, though.
I don’t care if my hands smell like onions, I eat 2 cloves of raw garlic on my salad every evening
I have salad with every dinner (and sometimes for lunch). I cut everything fresh (usually about 7 different vegs). I cannot grasp pre-cut salad fixings. It does not compute!
My goodness, so much scorn for the pre-cut onions! I bet you anything that a bunch of the naysayers buy those baby carrots so they don’t have to peel the big ones. Is that prepared-veggie double standard?
I buy pre-cut onions because I’m so sensitive to the cry-factor that even being in the same room where they’re being cut makes me bawl.
Feel like? How about a jerk?
@BigNutty: I probably would buy pre-cut onions, but deviled eggs? Ugh. Does anyone really eat those things? **shudder**
@Eyebrows McGee: Ummmmmmm, rum and onions.
@waldy: funny you mention that. I buy the “baby” carrots all the time for lunch. For Thanksgiving, though, I bought a huge bag of natural carrots, and chopped up the leftovers for lunch. They were noticeably — really, really noticeably — much more delicious. I probably knew that in my secret heart, but the convenience and all that. I think I’ll buy the whole carrots from here on out.
Baby carrots are way tastier than whole, cut up carrots. The carrots they sell in the grocery store are usually horse carrots that taste like crap. I’ll pay for the convenient baby carrots…when they’re on sale.
@iamme99: Use steel soap.
Do you folks realize that most of the “baby carrots” sold now are not baby carrots? They’re actually normal carrots cut and mechanically peeled/rounded.
Baby carrots are a scam, and don’t taste any better except, perhaps, in your mind.
Well, if baby carrots are actually just normal carrots peeled and rounded…since there is a lot of effort to peel and round regular carrots, I’m okay with buying baby carrots. My rabbit eats carrots and loves them but because they’re fattening for him, he only eats one or two baby carrots a week. Also, I use them in salads and soups.
I’m pretty sure it has already been mentioned somewhere in the sea of comments, but I will add my drop also…
Vidal’s are not even in season, it’s a scam on that angle also.
@stickystyle:
doh, Vidal = Vidalia
Peeling… OK, I guess. (Although I don’t “peel” my carrots.) But why would you round your carrots?
Honestly, it seems much more difficult and annoying to chop onions than scrub and cut carrots. But, somehow, the latter is OK and the former is blasphemy.
Okiedokie.
The baby carrots that I steal out of mom’s garden are indeed baby carrots. And mom has lot of onions planted around her rose bushes as onions discourage aphids and other rose sucking bugs.
So why buy precut, pre-diced, or pre-whatever?
Maybe because mom lives too far away to steal fresh veggies on a momemtns notice?
@witeowl: A scam for the consumer, maybe, but baby carrots are great for farmers. Carrots that are too short/crooked/ugly to go in the standard bags are cropped and rounded to make babies.
What the heck people? Don’t any of you own a food processor, or a chopper? A relative of mine gave me a gift called Deluxe Chopper by GE about 2 yrs. ago. I love it! Takes all the tears out of chopping onions. And, it takes all of about 5 seconds to chop what I need. Clean up is easy too. I guess I just don’t understand what everybody is complaining about when we’ve got all these contraptions out there to make life easier.
Statistically speaking, pre-chopped onions are more likely to be contaminated with delicious microbes. Not only only due to the greater surface-to-volume ratio (chopped food has more exposed food surface to receive the microbes than the food as a whole item, especially one wrapped in a peel you throw away when you chop it yourself) but also because, well, who cut the onion and under what hygienic conditions? Especially in Red Hook
— I’m kidding. I like Red hook. 
Have you seen the pre-fried bacon in the stores? $14.50 a pound!!!! P.T. Barnum was right; there’s one born every minute.
Onions aren’t the only food item like that. I was in Wally World the other day. A full size can or corn cost $.01 more than the half-size (single serving) can with the pull-top. – Twice as much corn for a penny more!
As much as I like to save money, and the fact that I am single and live alone, this means I often have to eat the same meal for 3 days straight.
BTW- just because Vidalias are out of season doesn’t mean this is a scam. Under the proper storage conditions, they will keep for months.
Aren’t onions basically free?
Precooked bacon, on the other hand, ain’t bad. Saves ya panfuls of grease.
Buying pre-cut onions is the ultimate in laziness. It takes less than 1 minute to skin and cut 2 whole onions. Some things I can understand, like a bag of mixed greens or something, but pre-cut onions shouldn’t even exist.