Onion ring recipes

Onion ring recipes

The best use for beer by non-beer drinkers is as the base for many onion ring recipes! That is heresy for beer drinkers, we realize that. Since there are some excellent beers in this world, choose one that you might like to sip on while you cook! It would be a shame to have 'extra' and just have to chuck it down the sink drain, no?

We think we have found one of the best onion ring recipes out there. It was part of the http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu website which did not provide attribution, but so superb that we would wish to give the author's "mama" credit, if we could ever ascertain who that is! Until then, we call it:

TENNESSEE MAMA'S ONION RINGS

1 cup flour

1 cup beer (the brand of your choice since there will be some left to cool you during the cooking!)

3-4 cups shortening for frying purposes

3 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons salt

seasoning salt (optional).

Combine flour and beer in a large bowl, blending thoroughly. Cover and allow batter to sit at room temperature for at least 3 hours. Afterwards, gently stir in the sugar and salt.

Cut onions into one-fourth inch or larger (depending upon preference) slices. Separate slices into rings. Heat shorting to 375 degrees F. This best of onion ring recipes says you MUST have your grease hot, or NO recipe will work! (You can determine this temperature by dropping a sample ring into the hot grease -- it should begin to immediately sizzle and quickly rise to the top or a one inch square piece of bread will brown in one minute in 375 degree oil.) Dry sliced rings and roll in flour. Then dip onion rings into batter and fry until delicate golden brown. The batter can be made thicker by adding more flour or thinner by adding more beer.

This onion ring recipe batter can also be used successfully for frying okra with a batter-that-sticks. The only complaints received were from those who let the batter stay in the bowl overnight and dry. It was said the batter sticks so well to the bowl that it has to be chiseled out!

Besides this best of the onion ring recipes, there are "everything onion" facts you're sure to want to know:

- You can dry onions in your own oven by chopping them into pieces and putting them in the oven on cookie sheets. Use the very lowest oven setting. Turn them periodically and remove them when dry, but before they get brown. Put them in airtight containers. They keep just fine on your shelf at room temperature.

- If you get a really great deal on onions, you can freeze them. Realize that freezing breaks the onion's cell membranes and changes their texture when thawed, you'll only want to freeze those you'll use in cooking.

- You can chop them up and mini-package them before you freeze them.

- You can chop them up, freeze them on cookie sheets and then package them in bulk quantities. This allows you to pull out later just what you need because the pieces are independently frozen.

- You can also freeze whole onions, chopping them up as they thaw. You cry less when you chop frozen onions because the eye-irritating oils aren't as volatile!

- If you plan on using a fresh onion raw in salads, you'll get a sweeter flavor if you chill the onion in the refrigerator for an hour before serving!

Finally, to get onion juice off of your fingers, sprinkle baking soda on them and then rub them with a piece of fresh lemon or lime!