How To Cut Your Onion For The Best Sizzling Fajitas

Sizzling chicken fajitas are the obvious answer when you need to get dinner on the table fast. A jumble of seasoned and pan-fried bell peppers, onion, and strips of protein, this dish is a guaranteed family favorite. However, to elevate your fajitas to new heights its worth mastering a failsafe onion slicing technique, which creates identically-sized strips that are guaranteed cook through at an even rate.

To start, slice the top off your peeled onion, taking care to leave the root in place. Cut your onion in half, through the root, and lay each piece flat on your cutting board. Then you're going to make a series of cuts along your onion to create slices that are still connected at the root end. Simply make thicker cuts for chunkier onions or finer ones for slender slices, that start at one end of your onion and move up to the root (just be sure to stop short so you don't cut through the root itself). Finally, make spaced cuts across your onion in the other direction until you reach the root. This should result in stubby, plank-like pieces of onion once separated.

This slicing method works best with larger onions, which means you won't need to mess around with peeling several smaller varieties. Indeed, most fajita recipes call for a high quantity of onions anyway to complement the savoriness of the strips of meat; they sweeten as they cook down, lending the dish a balanced quality.

While thicker, haphazardly chopped chunks of onion create textural interest, they don't provide those gently charred edges and tender, almost squidgy centers that sliced onions bring to the table. Even slicing your onion into crescent-shaped segments rather than strips, results in an assortment of pieces that are a mix of varied sizes and unlikely to cook at a similar rate. As with all one-pan recipes, it's vital that your ingredients are cut to comparable dimensions to ensure each element is ready at the same time, much like a stir fry. Slicing your onions into thinner strips means they can soften and become almost translucent as the protein and other veggies cook through. This allows them to get slightly brown at the edges and become tender in the middle without burning. 

Strip-cut onions are also perfect for sheet-pan style fajitas. Simply toss them in a bowl along with your chicken or beef, peppers, and seasonings before evenly spreading everything out onto your baking tray. A final spritz of oil and you can roast the lot in the oven to create a hands-free dinner that takes little monitoring. Using a large baking tray also means you can prep extra to enjoy later as a high-protein filling for quesadillas or a meaty topping on loaded fries and nachos.