Carla Hall's Onion Rings - Ozzified!

I’m with Carla Hall - I LOVE onion rings, one of the most vilified sides in the history of fast food.  I rarely eat them now that they’re on nearly every top ten list of the worst foods you can ever eat, so when I do eat them, I want them to be GREAT! I want my splurge to be crispy, crunchy perfection, not a sad, soggy mess. I’m sure Carla would agree that the best way to ensure they're the tastiest is to make them ourselves. 

Yesterday, I took Carla’s recipe and Ozzified it. Yes, I know the show was about our last meal on Earth and like Clinton Kelly said, if the world’s going to end, who cares about nutrition? Well, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be here tomorrow and even though this version may have a bit more nutrition than the original recipe, they’re still a splurge – a little added fiber isn’t going to neutralize all the fat that’s giving it that great crunchy goodness. That’s akin to the line of thinking I had when I used to wash down a Big Mac with a diet Coke. Yes, it had fewer calories than a full sugar soda or the shake I’d have preferred to order, but it still was a heart attack in a Styrofoam clamshell.

I followed Carla’s recipe and instructions with the following modifications:

• I used whole wheat flour and a little ground flaxseed meal in place of the white flour
• used sparkling mineral water in place of the high sodium club soda
• added some psyllium husks to the panko crumbs for even more fiber. 

Keep in mind, whole wheat flour doesn’t stick to the onion  as easily as refined white, so I dipped the ring into some water before the flour step.Don't skip the flour step or the batter won’t cling to the onion on its own – it needs the flour step to give it something to grab onto. Also, the batter is denser than Carla’s so I added more sparkling water to make it thin enough to coat the ring without becoming a cakey mess but not so thin that the panko/psyllium husks had nothing to stick to.

Carla's tip about the instant potatoes was killer – every one of them came out crispy. The final result was to die for delicious – and very much worth it.  I couldn't eat them all, and because I was in a hurry to get to a college football game, I inadvertently left the uneaten ones on the baking rack overnight. The football game I went to was by far the most surprising one I've ever seen - we had a fake referee (who was really a streaker) whistle a play dead. While he was running around the field naked, a melee ensued between the two teams that cleared both sidelines with the fighting spread out over 60 yards. 


Even more surprising was that the onion rings were still great almost 24 hours later - so crispy and delicious that I popped one on my veggie burger with a little no-salt ketchup for lunch. Unbelievably good, but believe this...if the world were ending, that veggie burger would've been a luscious, beefy Lola Burger!