Live the Live ™

If you look online, there are a  million ways to make onion rings. So, in doing my research, my first step was to decide how I wanted them. Did I want a big, thick batter? Or something extremely light? Or something somewhere in the middle?

I’m not a fan of onion rings that have more batter than onion. After all, my nickname is “Ponas Svogunas,” which means ”Mr. Onion” in Lithuanian.

So, after looking through dozens of recipes, I finally came up with one on my own that really satisfied my craving for onion and also a craving for a great crunch.

The set-up requires four trays, and lots of messy dunking before it goes into the oil. But it’s all worth it in the end!

I have a deep fryer, but the basket in it is small, so I can’t fry as many onion rings at one time as I’d like. So using a larger pan with a shallow pool of oil was the answer: it allowed for more onion rings to be fried in a single batch.

Yellow onions, sliced abut 1/4″ wide

 

I like to fry with peanut oil, so I pour an inch or two into a large pan and heat it to 340°, using a thermometer.

I peel the onions and cut them into quarter-inch wide slices, breaking them up into rings. (If a couple of rings of onion stick together to form a thicker ring, I don’t have a problem with that!)

Once that’s done, the procedure is really simple: dunk the onion rings in the first pan with the egg, coating them well. Then dunk them into the second tray with the whole wheat flour, shaking off any excess. Then dunk them into the third tray with the egg, making sure it’s completely coated. And finally, dunk them into the fourth tray with the seasoned Panko breadcrumbs, again, shaking off any excess.

Drop the onion rings into the hot oil and be sure to flip them so they cook on both sides. Cook until they’re golden brown. Place them on a sheet pan with a metal rack to cool.