Battered or Breaded: A Jose Mier Gastronomy Comparison
First off let me say I love onion rings. It doesn’t matter what kind they are I love them. They can be here battered or some other battered or the kind that are coated in breadcrumbs. I enjoy both especially with a side of ketchup for dipping. However, some others may have their favorite. There are two schools of thought on this. One favors the coating of onions in batter before frying, the other likes to have the crispy, crunchiness that comes from coating onion rings in breadcrumbs.
I guess it just comes down to preferences and if you’re eating out, the restaurant that you choose. It also might have to do with the ease of the recipe. I think the breadcrumb coated onion rings are a bit simpler to make. You don’t need to go through the extra step of making a better. Onion rings are perfect accompaniment to just about everything but they go especially well with barbecue and as you know I’m a big barbecue fan as you can tell from my previous Jose Mier Gastronomy posts.
Some barbecue restaurants or steakhouses like to serve onion strings. Let me be clear about this: onion strings do not compare in any way to onion rings. In fact I judge steakhouses by whether or not they have onion rings on the menu. If they do they get a positive checkmark in my book. If not I really don’t want to go there. I don’t care how good the steaks are. When I go to a steakhouse I want onion rings and in most of my favorite steakhouse is the rings they serve are the huge ones period It doesn’t even have to be a steakhouse. If you’re familiar with the Red Robin chain of restaurants you know they serve their onion rings and a vertical stack. I suppose onion rings by their very nature are suited to stacking. That’s fine with me I’ll devour them anyway they’re served. I like to go to Red Robin every now and then and there’s always one close by my community of Sun Valley, CA.
Jose Mier Prefers…
Getting back to the two different methods, the recipe I included here is for the bread crumb coated version. While you don’t have to create a batter you do need an egg, milk and flour mixture to make sure that the breadcrumbs adhere to the onions before frying. If you go for the batter method you’ll create the batter, sometimes incorporating beer into it for greater flavor, coat the onions and fry them.
If you pressed me I go for the batter version. In either case I kind of like how the batter or breadcrumbs form a shell from which you can extract onion as you bite into it. I guess that’s an effect of frying. Whatever method you choose they’re not very difficult and there are tons of recipes to watch on YouTube like the one I include here. If you’re making up some barbecue Fried chicken or hot dogs why not whip up a batch of onion rings? They’re the perfect side dish.
