Onion Rings

These delicious, crunchy, and spicy onion rings are always a big hit.

Use large brown or yellow onions for the best rings. Peel the onions, and slice them in thick 3/8-1/2″ slices. Separate the rings and immerse them in a big bowl of ice water for an hour, if you have the time. This step isn’t required if you’re short on time, but it gives the best results.

The recipe shown here is fairly spicy, but even the old folks enjoy them, so I don’t think the spices are excessive. However, if necessary, you can obviously modify the recipe to suit your own taste. You can pretty much tell by looking which spices to change.

This is a several step process. Soak the rings in ice water, dry them off (or let them dry), dip them in the dry mix, into the wet mix, and back in the dry mix.

You will need to fry the rings in at least 1″ of oil, or better yet, in a deep fat fryer. I use corn oil, but there are other oils that work as well. Heat the oil to 320 degrees in the deep fryer, or 350 degrees in the skillet. The difference is that the rings will cool off the oil in the skillet so you have to start a little hotter.

After the rings are coated and the oil is hot, place several rings in the oil without crowding them. You will need to cook several batches, but each batch will only cook about three minutes. Let the finished rings drip onto paper towels on a cookie sheet. You can put them in a warm oven while you finish cooking. The sooner you serve them, the better.