Onion Rings!

Cooking is one of the things I find great joy in. 

As a male growing up in the '50s (with one brother and three sisters), I was not expected to cook. I was expected to mow the lawn, shovel snow, and take out the trash. My sisters did laundry and helped in the kitchen. (The only gender neutral chore was setting the table, and my mother carefully wrote down the rotation for the entire year as soon as she got her annual calendar, to settle bitter fights over whose turn it was.)

So I came to cooking late in life. I didn't start picking it up until college. Right after graduating I began living cooperatively (something I sustained until I started keeping house with Susan last year). By virtue of living in small groups from ages 21-66 it has basically been my turn to cook about once a week for the last four decades—an arrangement that works perfectly for me. That one day I'd give myself over to nurturing my housemates as the most important thing I'd do that day. I came to think of cooking as karma yoga. On the other days someone else cooked for me, and no one was taking advantage of anyone else. Perfect.

I even got to the point of enjoying doing dishes, though that took longer than discovering the joy of cooking (which was more or less coincident with discovering Rombauer and Becker's classic by the same name).

Every so often I get inspired to learn something new in the kitchen and this week it was onion rings. I've always been partial to alliums (think onions, garlic, shallots, leeks, and chives), and often order this American diner staple when eating at a roadhouse. Unfortunately, restaurant onion rings have often been disappointing. All too frequently they are either too greasy or undercooked. Yuck.

This week I'd finally decided that enough was enough. I was inspired by an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives hosted by Guy Fieri on the Food Network, that I caught while doing outpatient infusion therapy at St Luke's Hospital (something I do every fortnight to keep my cancer in check). The show I watched offered the featured restaurateur's recipe for onion rings, for which that place had a regional reputation. I was all ears.

I turns out that there are two keys to fabulous onion rings:

1. Cut them ahead
This guy starts Monday for onion rings he intends to serve Wednesday. On Monday he simply peels the onions and sets them in the refrigerator. On Tuesday he slices them, separates the rings, and lays them on a tray to air out in the fridge. On Wednesday he prepares the batter and fries them. The point of this deliberate pace is let the onions dry out so that surface moisture does not lead to the batter sloughing off in the hot oil. It turns out that freshly cut onions are juicy and that interferes with the adhesion.

2. Cook them hot
Whenever frying, you want the oil to be right below the smoking point (which indicates the oil is breaking down). That's somewhere around 350 degrees, depending on the kind of oil and how thick the food is. The hotter the oil, the quicker the frying is accomplished (about two minutes with onion rings) and the less absorption occurs. 

Hints: 
o  Make sure the oil is reasonably fresh (you can only use fry oil so many times before it starts to break down and get rancid).

o  Put enough oil in the pot that it stays hot when the raw onions rings are dropped into the oil (a significant drop in temperature equates to soggy rings).

o  Don't put too many rings in the pot at the same time; you want to cook them fast.

o  Onion rings are supposed to be light, not heavy, and they should be served hot.

To reduce the variables we bought a box of onion ring batter (Don's Chuck Wagon brand, a subsidiary of Hodgson Mill, seasoned with paprika, pepper, and celery). Further, we used Vidalia Onions, now in season. They are incredibly sweet and not sharp—delicious when fried. Though these onions don't keep well, when you can get them fresh they're the onion of choice. Yum.

To our delight, Susan's and my very first attempt turned out well enough last Tuesday afternoon, that we promptly cranked out a second batch that we proudly delivered to our annual neighborhood Fourth of July Party that evening. Talk about street cred!

In the future Susan and I look forward to experimenting with plain bread crumbs and seasoning our own batter. What a delightful addition to our repertoire. 

Bon appetit!