What I Learned in Kitchens Peeling Onions
The lesson hiding inside the saddest job in the kitchen.
What I Learned in Kitchens: Peeling Onions
The lesson hiding inside the saddest job in the kitchen.
Daniel Strongin
Jan 29, 2026
First day at the Ritz.
Butterflies and stars in my eyes. The Ritz.
Then the chef hands me two fifty-pound bags of onions.
“Peel them.”
Have you ever peeled fifty pounds of onions with no one showing you how?
When people think of five-star cuisine, they think of glamour.
The Ritz served classical cuisine on silver platters.
Every table had a waiter, a captain, and a busboy — all watched over by the maître d’.
Cooks in spotless whites. Elegant dishes. Perfect sauces.
But what most don’t see is the kitchen behind the swinging doors.
For every cook placing a sprig of parsley, three are peeling onions, crushing garlic, washing carrots.
Glamour rides on the backs of a mountain of the mundane.
In those days, peeling onions was a rite of passage.
Many wonderful cooks began their careers with tears in their eyes, scratches on their fingers, and the smell of onions that never left their skin.
Bored. Deflated. Almost broken.
Peeling onions is like most of life’s chores — tedious, necessary, and unavoidable.
Laundry, bureaucracy, taxes, waiting in line — the list goes on, and they never get easier.
At first, I fought every onion.
The skins stuck to my fingers, the blade slipped, and my eyes burned so badly I couldn’t tell where the onion ended and I began.
And I wasted a lot of onion.
Time dragged. My mind kept counting — five done, ten done, forty pounds to go.
I searched every cookbook for a trick. There was no Google.
I asked the other cooks. Most just said, “Tough it out.”
Then Oswaldo — the saucier, and one of the best cooks I’ve ever known — took pity on me.
He walked up, turned on the cold water in the sink beside me, and said nothing.
The chill hit the onions and, to my surprise, eased the sting instantly.
He told me to keep the onions in the refrigerator overnight. Cold onions. Fewer tears.
Then he took my paring knife, frowned, and ran it along a steel — that round rod chefs keep nearby and too often ignore.
That was the first time he called me Charlie. He said I reminded him of Charlie Chaplin, and told me to call him The Master.
And if he caught me doing something dumb, he’d bark one word like a siren:
“Charlie!”
With a cold onion and a properly trued edge, the job became bearable.
Well — mostly.
To this day, I still resist doing the small right thing first: chilling the onions, taking ten seconds to true the blade.
It’s an ongoing battle — not with onions, but with the slacker inside me who hunts for shortcuts.
Self-discipline isn’t a “thing.” It’s a muscle you train.
And if you keep at it, it does make things better — even if it never feels easy.
Looking back, what I treasure most about the Ritz isn’t the silver platters.
It’s the cold sink beside me.
And the sound of Oswaldo’s voice when he saw me drifting:
“Charlie!”
In kitchens — and in life — the shine is polished on the shoulders of unseen work.
Frustration. Resistance. Repetition.
Camaraderie. Small corrections no one notices.
I didn’t learn discipline from praise.
I learned it one onion at a time — standing in the heat, confronting my own hesitation, and earning the right to move on.
That’s what I learned in kitchens — peeling onions.
Kitchen Notes
Two small moves that change the whole job:
Chill the onions (even 20–30 minutes helps).
True the edge before you start. A few light strokes on a real steel can reduce drag and tearing, which means less onion vapor in your eyes.
If you want, I’ll share (in future Kitchen Notes): the exact grip, the order of cuts, how to minimize waste, and what I look for in a good paring knife.
🧅 If you enjoyed this story, share it with someone who’s still learning to sharpen their edge.
For now, I’m keeping these early posts open. Over time, the main stories will stay free, and the Kitchen Notes (extra technique, small drills, and practical details) will be for paid subscribers only. A taste, so you know what you are missing.
If you enjoyed this story, share it with someone who’s still learning to sharpen their edge.
My goal is to earn just enough to sustain the work, while keeping it open to anyone who loves food, craft, and the quiet art of doing things well.
For now, just enjoy them as they were meant to be read.
AND NOW: A video of me peeling onions, the way I was taught at the Ritz.