Onion Rings
Beer batter, ice cold, mixed at the last second and left lumpy. Cold batter into hot oil is what makes a shell that stays crisp.
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 20 min
- Resting
- 30 min
- Total
- 1 hr 10 min
- Serves
- 4
- Revisions
- 1
Allergens
- Cereals containing gluten
- Sulphites
Named from the ingredients as written, including those carried in from sub-recipes. This is not a guarantee — check the labels on what you actually buy, and note that a product’s recipe can change.
Ingredients
Serves
Onions
Batter
Frying
To finish
Method
Onions
Slice the onions into 1cm rings and separate them, keeping the larger ones and saving the small centres for something else.
Soak the rings in the milk for 30 minutes. It takes the raw harshness off and gives the flour something to grip.
Batter
Put the 120g of dusting flour in a bowl.
Whisk the 140g of flour with the cornflour, baking powder, salt and paprika.
Frying
Heat the oil to 180C.
Batter
Only now, with the oil at temperature, pour in the fridge-cold lager and whisk briefly, leaving it lumpy.
Cold and last-minute are both deliberate. The colder the batter, the bigger the difference in temperature when it hits the oil and the more violently the water in it flashes to steam, which is what makes a light open shell. A batter mixed early goes flat and warm and fries heavy.
Frying
Lift a ring out of the milk, drop it in the dry flour and turn it, then shake off the excess.
Dip it in the batter, let the excess run off for a second, and lower it into the oil.
Fry six at a time for 3 to 4 minutes, turning once, until deep gold and rigid.
Six at a time is the limit. More drops the oil temperature and the batter absorbs oil rather than crisping.
To finish
Drain on a rack, never on paper, and salt immediately while the surface is still wet enough to hold it.
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What to expect
- Taste
Salt and fried batter first, then the sweetness of cooked onion. Smoked paprika gives it a background that plain batter lacks.
- Aroma
Frying batter and sweet onion.
- Texture
The whole dish. A shell that audibly shatters and an onion inside that gives without being slimy.
- Sound
The fry, and the crunch. Both are the point.
- How the flavour moves
Salt and crust first, then onion sweetness, then a lingering fried-batter savour.
- Serve it
Straight from the fryer.
- Goes with
A burger. A cold beer — the rest of the can from the batter.
Cook's notes
- Difficulty
Moderate, and the difficulty is temperature discipline.
- Cost
Very low.
- Equipment
A deep heavy pan, a thermometer and a wire rack.
- When to make it
With a burger, or a Friday.
- Best season
None.
- You know it is done when
Deep gold and visibly rigid, with a bubbled uneven surface rather than a smooth one.
- And it feels like
A shell that shatters, with the onion inside soft but still holding together as a ring.
- Food safety
Hot oil is the hazard: a deep pan no more than a third full, nothing wet going in, a lid within reach and never water on an oil fire. Let the oil cool completely before moving it.
- Where it goes wrong
- Mixing the batter before the oil is hot, so it goes flat and warm.
- Skipping the dusting flour, so the batter slides off the wet onion.
- Frying more than six, which drops the oil temperature and makes them greasy.
- Guessing the oil temperature.
- Draining on paper, which steams the underside soft.
- Salting late, when the surface is dry and will not hold it.
- If it does go wrong
Greasy: the oil was below about 165C. Batter slid off: no dusting flour, or the onions were too wet. Pale and soft: too cool, or too many at once. Dark outside and raw batter inside: too hot; drop to 175C.
- Making it ahead
The dry mix and the onion soak. The batter and the frying are à la minute.
- Keeping it
None. They are worse every minute.
- Reheating
An oven at 200C for 5 minutes recovers some of it.
- Freezing
No.
- Leftovers
None realistically.
- Scaling it
Fry in sixes regardless, holding cooked rings on a rack in a 140C oven.
- Substitutions
Any cold fizzy lager. Sparkling water works and gives a slightly less flavourful but equally crisp batter, and makes the dish alcohol free. Buttermilk instead of milk for the soak.
- Dietary swaps
Contains gluten and sulphites from the beer. Vegan and dairy free if the milk soak is a plant milk, which works. Egg free and nut free.
- Shopping for it
Large mild onions — Spanish or brown — give bigger rings and a sweeter result than small strong ones.
- Keeping the cost down
Three onions and some flour. The oil is the main cost and it can be strained and reused twice.
- Sustainability
Onions are among the lowest-impact vegetables there is, store for months without refrigeration and grow well in Britain. The frying oil is the only real consideration: strain it through a sieve and reuse it, and when it is finished put it in the bin rather than down the sink, where it hardens and blocks drains. The small centre rings left over should go into a soup rather than the bin.
- Nutrition
Deep fried, and honest about it.
- Worth it?
Heat the oil before you mix the batter. That order is the whole difference.
Where it comes from
- Origin
The United States.
- Also called
Onion rings.
- Said out loud
Straightforward.
- What the name means
Descriptive.
- History
Battered fried onion is an old idea and the American diner ring is a twentieth-century one — a recipe appears in a New York newspaper in the 1930s and drive-ins made them ubiquitous after the war. The beer batter used here is a separate and older tradition, from British and Belgian fish frying, where the alcohol's lower boiling point and the carbonation both help produce a light shell.
- Why it matters
A fixture of American fast food and British pub menus, and one of the few side dishes people order instead of chips rather than as well.
- When it is eaten
With a burger, or as something to put in the middle of a table.
- The traditional way
Deep frying in a wet batter.
- How it changed
The frozen breadcrumbed ring, which is a different product made from reconstituted onion paste and is not this.
- Regional variations
Breadcrumbed rather than battered is common in the United States. Bhaji-style versions use gram flour and spices.
- How this version differs
The batter is mixed after the oil is at temperature, which almost no recipe specifies, and the cornflour and baking powder are both there for stated reasons.
- Sources and credit
None.
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