The Crunchiest Homemade Onion Rings

Lately I've been wanting to experiment making snacky savoury foods, and seeing as this was my birthday week (yes...my birthday is unfortunately on Sept 11th....), and we are hosting a bit of a casual get together on the weekend where we hope to serve pork sliders for the first time, I wanted to try one of my favourite burger accompaniment foods; crunchy onion rings.

I love anything with crunch and these my friend, and I don't like to toot my own horn too much, are THE BOMB. I ate almost the whole test batch (that's almost 15 onion rings) before Jase came home which is saying something...because with all recipes I make, I nibble here and there over a long period of time.
People who know me, know that I am the slowest eater ON EARTH. But with these, I literally shovelled them down straight away.

I made this honey mustardy creme fraiche dipping sauce to accompany a beer can chicken I cooked once on the BBQ last summer, and it works and tastes equally great with these onion rings.

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Crunchiest Homemade Onion Rings

Serves 6 or 2 truly greedy people
Prep time 20 mins
Cooking time 10-12 mins
Gluten Free option available, see brackets for replacement ingredients

Ingredients:

• 3 Brown onions, peeled & cut into 1cm-thick slice rings - separate the rings and discard the centres
• 1 cup Plain Flour (replace with Rice Flour for Gluten Free option)
• 1/2 cup Cornflour
• 1 & 1/4 tsp Baking Powder
• Good pinch of sea salt
• 3/4 tsp Sweet Paprika
• 1/2 tsp Dried Oregano Flakes
• 250ml Pure Blonde beer (replace with Soda Water for Gluten Free option)
• 2 1/2 cups of Panko breadcrumbs in a mixing bowl (replace with 2 cups Polenta for Gluten Free option)
• 2L Ricebran oil
• Sea Salt Flakes right before serving

Steps

1. Line a baking tray with foil. Combine the flour, cornflour, baking powder, spices and salt in a mixing bowl.
2. Coat Onion rings with the flour mixture, shake off excess and place on the prepared baking tray
3. Add the beer/soda water to the flour mixture, whisk until just combined
4. Dip each floured ring in beer batter, allow excess batter to drip off (or simply fling it off in the bowl), coat in panko crumbs, then return to baking tray and keep repeating until all remaining rings are coated
5. Heat oil in a relatively deep saucepan on high heat to reach 190 deg celcius (or donut frying temperature). If you don't have a thermometer, simply place a piece of bread dropped into oil as a test. If it turns golden within 12secs the oil is ready
6. Cook onion rings in batches of 4-5 for 1 min or until golden brown. Remember the temperature of the oil drops each time an onion ring is dropped in, so allow small intervals for the oil to come back to 190deg.
7. Remove with a slotted spoon, place on a paper towel to soak up excess oil, sprinkle with sea salt flakes and serve!

Honey Mustardy Creme Fraiche dipping sauce

Ingredients

• 2 heaped dessert spoons of Creme Fraiche
• 2 tsp of Wholegrain mustard
• 1 tsp of Manuka honey
• 1/2 clove minced fresh garlic
• Sprinkling of freshly cracked pepper

Place all ingredients in a small mixing bowl, whisk well, and either serve as is, or decant into a serving dish to serve alongside your onion rings!

Once the onion rings are prepared, it takes mere minutes to fry them up. If you want to entertain and serve these but know you will be pressed for time on the day, these can be pre-prepared the day before, loosely wrapped in the fridge. Or you could simply pop in a ziplock bag and place in the freezer for frying up another time.

 

The most perfect crunchy vegetarian snack...like...EVER.
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