Oven "Fried" Onion Rings

Beautiful and highly intelligent readers, I have something great to share with you! Mostly great for me, but still worth sharing!

The other day I received an e-mail from a dear and most precious friend. Actually, I received 3 of them. They weren't big e-mails. But what they contained delighted my little heart so much I jumped up and down and ran to show John what she had sent me - and let me tell ya, running on hard wood flooring in crochet slippers is not a safe activity!

She had indicated to me earlier in the week that she planned on making Chorizo in Red Wine Sauce with Herbs. Whenever anyone tells me they plan on making a dish I post I always ask them to let me know how it goes. And I mean it! 

Well, she did. And she not only commented that she did but her actual e-mail contained the photos she took during the process of cooking and the final result! Either way, it was highly gratifying - apparently for her with respect to eating the food and for me to see someone else create a dish that I came up with - yes, it's a bit of an ego boost...

kaitlyn's chorizo, sub red peppers for tomatoes, plus roasted potatoes.

...But through her email she showed me that we have in fact actually connected over food via the content of this blog. It makes me feel like what I'm doing is worthwhile at the very least in the sense that my recipe (and her efforts) made her little mouth sing.

I couldn't be more flattered or honored or just plain fuckin stoked. Thank you for making my day, lady. Heart you. And in case any of you wanna show her a little love, you can check out her blog here. Seriously, she's rad.

Speaking of rad, how about some oven "fried" onion rings? I lifted this recipe from Dishing the Divine - a past SRC assignee. 

As part of our New Years Eve feast, I thought John would go crazy for these semi-healthy but not really at all onion rings - turns out, I did too. I'm ordinarily not much of an onion ring fan. I generally find them too heavy and greasy. These on the other hand were light, super crunchy, and pretty awesome. I did half the amount of onion than what was originally called for and still ended up with a mountain of onion rings. We ate them for 3 days. Holla!

Oven "Fried" Onion Rings

 (printable recipe)

Ingredients:

1 Large Yellow Onion, peeled & sliced into 1/2" thick rings (a mandoline is useful).

2 C Salted Kettle-Cooked Potato Chips.

15 Saltine Crackers.

1/2 C All-Purpose Flour.

1 Large Free-Range Organic Egg, room temperature.

1 C Buttermilk, at room temperature.

1/4 Tsp Cayenne Pepper.

Kosher Salt & Fresh Cracked Black Pepper.

3 Tbsp Vegetable Oil.
Ketchup (to serve).

What to Do: 

 Preheat your oven to 450F. 

First, set up your dredging station! In a food processor, finely grind the crackers and potato chips; Place in a shallow bowl. Place ¼ cup of the flour in another bowl. Beat the egg and buttermilk together in a third bowl. Then, whisk the remaining flour, cayenne, salt and pepper into the buttermilk mixture.

Working one at a time, dredge each onion ring in flour then the buttermilk mixture, and then in the crumb coating, turning to coat evenly. Make sure to allow the excess to shake/drip off between each bowl or you'll end up with just a gloopy mess of bowls and no coating for rings.  Transfer the coated rings to a large plate.

Pour 3 tablespoons of the oil onto 2 rimmed baking sheets. Place the baking sheets in the oven and heat just until smoking, about 4 minutes. Tilt the heated sheets to coat evenly with the oil. Be careful - it's hot!

Lay the onion rings out in a single layer on the oiled baking sheets. Bake for about 5 to 7 minutes or until crispy on the bottom side, flip, and continue cooking a further 5 to 7 minutes. 

Remove from the heat and allow to drain on paper towels before serving. Sprinkle lightly with salt.

Eat.