The Chefs Bench

Every year, some version of the same gadget resurfaces on social media: a pair of oversized, bug-eyed goggles that seal against your face, sold specifically to stop onions from making you cry. They look ridiculous, they cost more than they should, and — I’ll say this as plainly as I can — you do not need them.

I’ve cut thousands of pounds of onions over 45 years. Nobody in a professional kitchen wears goggles. Not because we’re tougher than you. Because there’s a real trick, it costs nothing, and it actually works.

Why onions make you cry, quickly

When you cut into an onion, you rupture its cells and release an enzyme that reacts with sulfur compounds inside, producing a gas that irritates your eyes the moment it reaches them. The more cells you rupture — and the more forcefully — the more gas gets released, and the faster it travels.

That’s the whole mechanism. Which means the fix isn’t blocking the gas from your eyes. It’s producing less of it in the first place, and slowing down what does escape.

The actual trick: a sharp knife and a cold onion

Two things do almost all the work.

A sharp knife. A dull blade doesn’t cut through onion cells cleanly — it crushes and tears them, which ruptures far more cells than necessary and releases far more gas. A properly sharp knife slices through with minimal cell damage. This is genuinely most of the solution, and it’s also just… how you should be cutting anyway, for every ingredient, always. If your eyes water badly every time you cut an onion, the very first thing to check is whether your knife is actually sharp, not whether you need a gimmick strapped to your face.

A cold onion. The enzyme reaction that produces the irritating gas slows down significantly at colder temperatures. Fifteen minutes in the fridge, or even the freezer, before you cut is enough to noticeably cut down the sting. Restaurants that go through onions constantly don’t do this for every single one, but for home cooking, it’s a free, trivial step that makes a real difference.

Combine both, and most people find the tears drop to almost nothing. Not zero — there’s no fully eliminating a chemical irritant released an inch from your face — but genuinely manageable, without spending money on a costume prop.

What to spend the money on instead

If you’re going to spend anything here, spend it on the knife, not the goggles. A knife that holds an edge well and gets sharpened regularly solves the onion problem as a side effect of solving about fifteen other problems in your kitchen at the same time. That’s always going to be the better trade: one purchase, actually useful every single day, versus a single-purpose item that solves a problem you could’ve solved for free.

That’s the whole verdict. Skip the goggles. Sharpen your knife, chill your onion, and get on with dinner.