Onions are notorious for the way they make people cry, an age-old problem that cooks have long attempted to overcome. French cuisine extraordinaire Jacques Pépin has his own method for a sob-free onion-cutting experience, and instead of using extra tools, all it involves is you, your knife, and the onion.

Pépin explains that your best defense mechanism is to disturb the onion as little as possible by using a sharp knife to cut it. A dull knife will cause more of a disturbance to the flesh since it forces you to saw or crush the onion, which destroys its cell walls and releases more of those eye-irritating gasses.

Professional chefs and knife shop purveyors Jacqueline Blanchard and Brandt Cox back up this claim, saying a sharp knife causes less juice to seep out from the onion. Meanwhile, Ree Drummond recommends chilling your onions first, and Alton Brown likes to use a fan to waft away the onion fumes.