Save Your Tears — We Tried TikTok's Viral Onion-Slicing Hack, and It's a Meal-Prep Must

Second only to the acidic sting of pineapple on my tongue, onions are one of the most vengeful produce I've ever encountered. I've spent years standing bleary-eyed over the cutting board as the acid from the onions reaches my cornea, but this simple TikTok hack just saved my tear ducts — and no, it doesn't involve wearing a pair of kitchen goggles. In a video response to @xxbaileyelizabethxx chopping onions, Sally, aka @cerealeatingghost, explained that the acid in onions is naturally attracted to the nearest water source, which usually happens to be my tear ducts as I'm meal prepping salads or whipping up a creamy bowl of pasta for dinner.

"All you have to do is get a damp paper towel, fold it up, keep it on your cutting board, and that acid will be drawn to the wet paper towel and not your tear ducts," Sally said in the video. Skeptical that the hack would solve my onion crying problem once and for all, I tested the hack for myself, and it actually works! All I had to do was lay the damp napkin on the cutting board, and my eyeballs were tear free. As someone who thinks garlic and onions make almost any meal better, I will be using this trick a lot. See the full TikTok video ahead, and test out your newfound onion-cutting skills with Chrissy Teigen's minestrone recipe.