Onion Rings 2 Ways

Hey, what's up? Most of us know onion rings only as the soggy thing that somehow makes its way into the bottom of your Burger King bag. Those stink. In my opinion, a well-made handmade onion ring is an absolutely transformational food that deserves your time and attention. Today, I'm gonna show you two different ways to make them at home, including two super easy to make sauces to dip them in. The first style of onion ring that I'm gonna make is what I would call an extra crispy. Think of an outback steakhouse blooming onion, but obviously this one's not gonna be soaked up with oil and the breading will stick firmly to the onion. To get started, I'll need some onions. I've got two jumbo white onions here. I wouldn't recommend yellow because they tend to get too soft when they're cooked and they're overly sweet. To ring these things out, I'll start by cutting off the north and south poles of each bulb and then I'll grab a knife to make a score along one side. I'm being really careful to cut only one layer deep here. The outer layer isn't useful to me as a ring because it's slimy, thin, and papery, so I'll peel that whole layer off. Once it's cleaned up, I'll cut this onion into roughly four planks that are about three quarters to one inch thick, give or take, and when I get to that last plank, I'll lay the onion on its side flat and slice horizontally so that I can get a flatter, more even cut. Next, I'll grab one of these onion planks and pop out the middle half. This stuff in the middle is still totally usable for other dishes, but for obvious reasons, it's not gonna make a compelling onion ring, so I'll set that aside and then carefully pop out the larger rings that are left. I'd say this innermost ring here is as small as you wanna go. It's probably about two and a half inches across, give or take. If the rings are too small, you just end up with too many pieces, and hand-breading all of them is a significant amount of work. Bigger looks cooler, too. The last ring segment here is super thin and covered in that slimy, papery stuff, so I'll lose that. Some people go out of their way to remove all of the inner onion membranes on these things, but in my trials, I found that it didn't really make a difference, so if you just bread and fry these properly, you shouldn't have a problem. Once I've got 16 to 20 of these large rings pulled apart, I'll grab a medium bowl to make the breading. That's 400 grams of all-purpose flour, 150 grams of cornstarch. The cornstarch helps keep excessive gluten from forming in this breading, and it helps absorb some of the moisture that comes off this food while it's cooking. Both of these factors lead to crispier fried foods that stay crisper for longer. Behind the starch, I'll add in six grams of baking powder, two grams of paprika, six grams of salt, and three grams of coarsely ground black pepper. Next, I'll grab a whisk, jump into the bowl, and stir everything to combine. Once it is, I'll grab two small containers, and into one, I'll add 300 grams, about two to three cups of buttermilk, and into the other, I'll add the same, about two to three cups of all-purpose flour, no seasoning, just plain flour. To bread these, I'll grab an onion ring and drop it into the flour. From there, I'll give it a light toss to coat, and then shake off anything excessive. This base dusting of flour really helps the buttermilk stick to the onion, which helps promote onion-breading bondage, which is crucial. Next, the ring's gonna get swirled around to coat in the buttermilk, then I'll let anything excessive drip off, and then I'll move the ring over to the breader that we just whisked up. I should mention that I have separate forks for each bowl to keep the dry and wet stages as separate as possible. Breading can be extremely messy if you don't work to keep things apart, and this really helps. Once I've got a good base of breading on this ring, I'm gonna give it a firm shimmy to remove anything excessive, and then I'll move it over to a sheet tray to hang out while I bread the rest. Now, a single-breaded onion ring can work, but the main issue here is coverage. If you have exposed onion, the oil the ring is frying in will slip in between the onion and the breading, and that's gonna give you a super-saturated, greasy disappointment. So to ensure proper coverage, I'm gonna bread these a second time. To do that, the onion's gonna go right back into the buttermilk. I'm gonna skip the flour dredge here up front, and I'll let anything excessive drip off, just like I did before, and then into the breader it goes. It's very important to keep extra buttermilk out of the dredge if you can. After 18 rings on the first round, inevitably some of that milk got in and clumped things up. This is actually ideal at this point. Those clumps will stick to the onion during the second breading and make things extra craggy and crispy, almost like Popeye's chicken, but obviously too much wet in the dry is gonna make clumps that are too big to stick. And that looks perfect. There's plenty of craggy little bits stuck to the outside and no exposure of the underlying onion. Once I've got a whole sheet tray double-breaded like this, I need to get my fry pot set up. For that, I'll grab my 6 1⁄2 quart Dutch oven and drop it down on the stove over medium heat. Then in goes roughly two quarts of neutral frying oil. In this case, I'm using canola, but any high smoke point oil would work. I'm preheating this pot to about 350 F, 175 C, and I'm also preheating my oven to 200 F, 95 C with a little wire rack sheet tray in there to keep these rings hot as they come out of the fryer. Once my oil is up to temp, I'm gonna carefully lower in the rings one at a time with a fork. I've got 18 rings breaded, so that means I can safely do three rounds of six. In total, these onions are gonna take about four minutes to get fully tender. As soon as all my rings are in the oil, I'm gonna come back with my spider to make sure they're not stuck together or to the bottom of the pot. A gentle jab here is more than enough pressure. If you touch these too much at this point, you could risk de-breading them, and that would be a bummer. After the first two minutes of frying, I'm gonna come back with a fork and carefully flip these over to make sure that they're getting crispy and golden evenly on both sides. As these get closer to being done, less and less moisture is gonna be escaping and the bubbles will start to slow down and shrink like this. After four minutes of total fry time, when I lift one of these onion rings out of the pot, you can see that it's lightly golden brown and very well crisped up. Now I'm gonna move this one and the other five to my rack in the low oven to stay crisp, and then I'm gonna drop my next six. While those are finishing up, I think it's the perfect time to make myself a little cocktail from the sponsor of this video, Shaker and Spoon. Shaker and Spoon is a monthly cocktail subscription box where you BYOS and then they send you everything else you need to make bar quality cocktails at home. I'm a Negroni guy, so I went with the Negroni 2 box this month. The box came with three different drink recipes, in this case, all using gin, and they send you enough ingredients to make four drinks per recipe. That's 12 per box. I'm feeling the Frutta e Fiori cocktail today. So to make that, I'll add my Campari, my tea infused gin. To make that, I just shook my gin with this hibiscus teabag that they sent along and let it sit for a few minutes. Next in some strawberry syrup and balsamic vinegar, all on top of ice, and I'll give it a shake, pour over some ice, and I'll finish that with a spritz of the included Tulsi basil hydrosol over the top. And then I'll drink this thing. That's summer in a glass, you guys. It's a little fruity and floral, but still nice, bitter, and well-balanced. So to summon your inner bartender, click the link in my description and use code Brian, or go to shakerandspoon.com slash Brian to get $20 off your first box. You use whatever spirit you like, and they'll send the rest to your door. That's shakerandspoon.com slash Brian for $20 off your first box. Once I've got all 18 of these onion rings fried off, I'm gonna pull the tray from the oven so that we can take a closer look. Okay, wow. These rings are looking super craggy, and they're what I would consider to be perfectly golden brown. But before I snap into one of these things, I'm gonna need something to dip it in. How about a smoky chipotle ranch? To make that into a high-sided container, I'll measure 125 grams of mayo, 50 grams of sour cream, 15 grams of lemon juice, one pressed garlic clove, 15 grams of the hot sauce of your choice, I likey franks, then one chipotle chili in adobo. My immersion blender goes in, and I'll spin it all up to break down the chili. You could skip the blender here for sure and just mince the chili really finely and then stir everything to combine. This is my tribute to the orange stuff that comes alongside a bloomin' onion at Outback. Obviously, I think this tastes better. It's fresh, it's smoky, it's bright, and just a little bit creamy. It's incredibly easy to make, and I think it's perfect for a fried onion. If smoky hot isn't your thing, here's a quick variation. Combine the same amount of mayo, sour cream, garlic, and lemon juice, stir or puree that to combine, then add in 10 grams of mince chive and 10 grams of chopped fresh dill. Now you've got an herby, fresh ranch dressing that is very appropriate for anything crispy and fried. To me, this ring right here has achieved everything that I could want in a fried onion. The breading aggressively sticks to the onion itself thanks to that base layer of dry flour, and the onion is cooked perfectly. It's tender but not raw, and it's not slimy either. Most fast food onion rings are limp and slide right out of the breader. Oh, and by the way, these things stay crispy for a while. This is me snacking on it 40 minutes after it came out of the oven. Okay, style two, also very crisp and great in its own way, but instead of using breading, we're gonna use batter, specifically a beer batter. This process is gonna start just like before with 16 to 20 large rings of white onion, but this time they're frozen solid. That takes about 30 to 45 minutes in the freezer. Now, to get these unfrozen, I'm gonna take them over to my sink and run warm water on them for about a minute. Why are they frozen in the first place? Well, this battered onion ring needs to cook very quickly to avoid getting greasy. So to shorten the cook time, we freeze the water inside the onion that breaks down the cell wall and kind of par-cooks the onion in a way that is very similar to cooking with heat. Next, I'm gonna use some paper towel to dab off any excessive water sitting on the outside because extra water in hot oil boils instantly and creates a very frothy, violent situation that can get kind of dangerous. Once they're all dried off, I'll set them aside and make my beer batter. For that, into a medium bowl goes 100 grams of all-purpose flour and 100 grams of rice flour. Rice flour acts very similar to cornstarch in that it inhibits gluten formation, but for batter, which is obviously wetter than breading, rice flour makes a lighter, longer-lasting crust in my experience. Next in is two grams of baking powder and five grams of salt. I'll whisk that to combine. And now for the beer part. First, I'll secure my bowl with a damp paper towel. Then I'll grab a 12-ounce beer. If you don't drink alcohol, you could go with a club soda. That would also work. Now, while whisking, I'm gonna drizzle in this beer. Adding the beer incrementally really helps avoid clumpiness. I started with about 10 ounces to see how it would thicken, and this needs a touch more moisture, so I'll add in another ounce or so, leaving me with just about an ounce left in the bottle. Texturally, it should fall off the spoon kind of like thick paint. If you've made any of my fried fish recipes before, then I would say this batter needs to be slightly more thick than that. Now, same as before, I'm gonna hit the raw onion with some flour to help get the batter to stick better. 300 grams of that's gonna go into a little bowl, and then I'll drop in my first onion. I'll toss, toss to get coated, and then I'll make sure to shake off anything excessive. The ring really likes to hold on to flour on the bottom side, and if too much of that made into the batter, it would get too thick. Speaking of batter, in it goes, and just like before, I've got a fork for the dry and a fork for the wet to keep things separate and tidy. Once I've got a nice bit of batter stuck to this ring, I'm gonna lift it up and let it drip off. Once it's shaken off, I'm gonna move it over to a sheet tray and then batter the other rings. If you're wondering, hey Bri, don't you normally batter things right before they go into hot oil? Great question. Yes, that is the traditional move for beer battered stuff, but that's not how I'm gonna do it. I decided that these onions were best double dipped in batter for the same reason that I double breaded the onions before. I wanna make sure that the onion is perfectly sealed up inside so that no oil gets in and sogs things up. Once I've got these rings pre-battered, I'm gonna move my whole setup over to my stove and check my oil. For beer batters and tempuras, I think it's best to cook at a hotter temperature. This oil's at about 375 F, because the higher moisture of the batter is more prone to absorbing fryer oil, and the quicker we can sizzle off that excessive moisture, the less greasy the onion ring will be. Now to get these rings into the fryer, I'm gonna drop them briefly into the all-purpose flour one more time. I really don't want a ton of that to stick though, because too much will make things cakey and kind of heavy. So shake off whatever you can, and then next I'll lay it into my batter one more time. I'll toss that back and forth to get it covered, lift it up, let it drip, and then shake off anything excessive. Lastly, I'll carefully drop this ring into the oil by laying in the bottom and then letting it naturally fall off my fork. This helps ensure ring roundness, because these rings are kind of floppy, and if you just lay them in willy-nilly, you'll get oblong shapes. I'm only cooking four rings in this first batch, mainly because filming things that cook really fast is hard, and I needed to move the camera, but six would easily fit in there for sure. In total, these rings are probably gonna need no longer than two and a half minutes to cook. At about the halfway mark, I'll come back and flip these onion rings over with a fork, just like I did before. After two and a half minutes in total here, I'm gonna lift one of these rings out and take a look. It looks kind of like a donut, an onion donut, and I love it. Once I've got 18 cooked rings, I'm gonna pull them out of the oven so that we can take a closer look. As you can see, that batter has set into a hard, glassy, but super light crust that's not oily at all. That's the challenge with beer batter. When it's cooked right, it's transcendent, but when it's cooked wrong, it's a greasy gut bomb that I want nothing to do with. How about a little dip in that dilly chive ranch dressing that I showed you guys before? Don't mind if I do. The flavor of this ring is yeasty, it's malty, and just a touch sweet. The batter is super stuck to the onion, which is a detail that I really can't stress enough making a difference. Oh, and listen to this crunch. It's cartoonish. I hope I've convinced you that onion rings can be an excellent food. Whether you go with the beer battered beauties or the extra crispy version, I think you guys are gonna be stoked. Are these kind of messy to make? Yes. Is it quick? Not really, but it's fun and it's worth it to make it every once in a while to really treat yourself to something special. I hope you try it soon. Let's eat this thing.