Green Onion Knife
How do you shred green onions?
Shredded green onions or green onion ribbons are frequently used in Korean (as well as Japanese and Chinese) cooking as garnish or used with a dressing. Although you can simply use a knife, there are special tools referred to as a green onion shredding knife especially for this purpose.
The Green Onion Shredding Knife is so uniquely Asian, you will be hard pressed to find this tool in a regular supermarket. It’s designed to shred green onions into slivery ribbons (very thin julienne cut) These are ideal for garnish or the Korean BBQ’s best friend, PA-CHE or PA-JEORI or PA-MUCHIM.
How do you julienne green onions?
Of course, you can simply use your knife. Cut a green onion in half (the mostly white part and the mostly green part). Take the bulb side of the green onion (mostly white part) and slice vertically without cutting through it completely. Unroll the onion.
Fold this in half and julienne very thinly.
Take the green part and fold it into thirds and cut into thin strips as well. Well done, you have green onion ribbons ready to be dressed or to use as garnish.
This Korean blog has an excellent post on how to do this with great easy-to-follow pictures.
Green onions as Garnish
Korean Stewed Pork Ribs with Green Onion Garnish. Pork Galbi-Jjim.
Korean Braised Fish with Green Onion Garnish.
Green onions are used in cooking, as a garnish, as a salad, as an accent of colour. You won’t find a Korean kitchen that doesn’t stock green onions regularly.
What do green onions taste like?
Green onions are the more gentle and delicate cousin of the regular onion. They are sweet and still sharp, but not nearly as much as an onion. The green parts especially have a refreshing leafy taste and can be pretty much added to any dish as a garnish. It’s even good in fresh salads- it adds just the right hint of a light onion flavour.
green onion shredder knife
This is the most common type of shredding knife you will find online (like this one). Its multiple blades are very sharp so please use caution. You simply grip the green onion in one hand and use a stroking motion while rotating (the onion) to get very thin slivers. You repeat strokes while rotating until you’ve completed that side before flipping it over and doing the same.
It’s tricky to get the entire green onion in perfect ribbons and it’s safer to finish up with a knife.
If you don’t get it the first few times, don’t worry, many Koreans don’t know how to use this tool properly either. The main advantage of using this over a knife is that you’ll always get very delicate and thin slivers with it. If you don’t mind ribbons that are a little thicker, you may not have use for this one in your kitchen.
Also, although there may be pictures slicing different vegetables with this tool (bell peppers, carrots), this is mostly known as a single-purpose green onion slicer in Korea. Also, I wouldn’t use this tool to chop green onions (also seen in an ad), this is strictly for making green onion shredded ribbons.
This is a nice-looking version of the basic tool from a Japanese brand, Negieru. Its usage is the same- hold the green onion by one and while stroking the blades the other way while rotating it. The blades seem a little safer and less aggressive but I can’t find it online with shipping to North America. Insert sad face emoji.
I can only imagine this is for restaurants or for households who regularly hold parties of 20 people or more. I can understand its benefits as there will be no tears whizzing through dozens of green onions stalks very quickly. But… overkill much? Because I don’t think you can do anything else with it- it works differently than a zoodle maker. Cool tool though.