the-spicy-mum

My favourite kitchen tool!

Dhreeti Khatri

I am feeling like an excited little girl opening up her brand-new toy set!!! This happens to be the 4th time in 16 years I've gotten this chopper, upgrading to a newer set and every time I've felt this excited, or maybe a little more excited every time.

Let me share with you why it is my favourite kitchen tool and how I use it. 

I have always struggled to be as quick and efficient like my mum when it came to slicing onions which happens to be one of the essential ingredients in curries. 

I remember as a child I used to admire my mum chopping onions.  It was so entertaining to watch the speed at which she'd peel the onion skin then quickly halve the onion, wash the halves,  then expertly use a very sharp red knife, which I always found her sharpening, like her life depends on it.  She'd hold the halved onion between her left thumb and pointer finger and use her right hand to hold the knife.  She'd expertly cut the onion into thin lengthwise strips at such a speed then quickly twist the angle of her sharp knife to cut those thin strips into finely chopped pieces. I think I fell in love with the idea of chopping the onions just by watching the speed at which my mum chopped onions. I couldn't wait for the day my mum would trust me with her favourite precious sharp red knife. 

I must have been around 12 or so when I started learning to chop onions and boy, I had tears rolling down my cheeks like Niagara Falls. I quickly fell out of love with onions.  I found peeling of that 1st layer difficult. It would sometimes be sticky, and I'd end up mistakenly peeling off an extra layer of the onion. 

By the time I got to the actual chopping part, I could barely see the knife because of the tears. I'd tightly close my eyes and use my hand as my eyes to guide me to blindly chop the onion hoping and wishing my fingers remained intact by the time I was done with the chopping. Holding all those thin lengthwise strips of onions tightly in place and trying to blindly chop them into finely diced pieces felt like mission impossible!

With time and practice I did get much better with chopping the onions but I lost all the fascination I had about chopping onions. What I did learn was I would never be as good as my mum when it came to chopping onions! I held on to this limiting belief until I got married. That was 16 years ago!

As a "Navi Naveli Dulhan" (newlywed) I got introduced to my very first electric chopper. It was one of the many wedding gifts we had received.

This chopper changed my limiting belief.  I could now chop onions at electric speed maybe even beating my mum, ha ha! It made the tedious onion chopping process so simple! I just had to peel the onion, roughly chop it into quarters so I could fit it into the chopper, close the chopper lid, plug and turn on the power.  Press the button and whirrrrrrr... In a few seconds I had finely chopped onion! Voila! There was no going back to manually chopping onions after this! The bonus was it actually saved me some time and a lot of tears!

I confess that for over these last 16 years I have manually chopped onions maybe only 5% of the time.  Only if a recipe requires lengthwise onions or onion rings. 

This has become one of my kitchen time saving tool!

Do you enjoy chopping onions?

Thanks for reading 

I hope you are well and safe!

Take Care and Keep Smiling 😊

Dhreeti Khatri - The Spicy Mum.

P.S: I also use this electric chopper to chop tomatoes, garlic, chillies, ginger.  

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