PSA: most often, “finely chopped onions” can be substituted with this cut

Halve onion lengthwise. Halve the half by the waist. Press them together with your thumb and your long- or ring finger, and chop straight down in thin slices.

Obvious exceptions (meatballs, tuna salads, etc) are obvious exceptions, but 9/10 times you're spending time on making little cubes for the sake of it.

I've been a dive bar cook, I've been a Michelin star restaurant chef, I've been head chef for a rehab island, a food writer, a rich people live-in-maid, and a lot of other things. I can chop chop chop – but for homecooking, I rarely cut more than this.

If you want the onions perfectly freed from each other after cutting, just take a paring knife and cut the root section out.

People impressed by knife skills are very rarely worth impressing anyway, and these are thin enough to caramelise or brown well, small enough to melt to nothing in stews and curries, and they take a fraction of the time to cut.

Also, these onions are known as Bombay onions in South East Asia. They are mild, crunchy and pretty sweet, and by far my fav onion on earth.