Showing posts with label Onion rings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Onion rings. Show all posts

Thursday, June 2, 2011

What's for dinner May 31, 2011

Last night's menu included salad, discount strip steaks (surprisingly tender, so I'm guessing the bones remaining in each one contributed to the low price), Hawaiian garlic toast, "Ranch Rings", and sautéed mushrooms and onions.

Dessert was a small handful of chocolate chips, eaten slowly.

I had the quasi-brilliant idea of making lower fat onion rings (aka Ranch Rings) by baking them in a coat of potato chips. Given that nearly a quarter bag of chips was used in the creation of the dish, I'm not sure that the lower fat concept was a success. I ran out of chips and patience before I ran out of sliced onions (hence the mushroom sauté).

Turns out making onion rings is tedious. It's exactly the kind of cooking I dislike.

I sliced the onions in thick rings, powdered them with flour, dredged them in beaten egg, and then pressed crushed onion-and-sour-cream potato chips on them. I think I needed the crumbs to be smaller, because they put up a fight and didn't want to stay on.

Next time--if there IS a next time--I will pulverize the suckers.

Luckily I have only one baking sheet, because by the time it was full, I'd had my fill. I generally don't mind tedious tasks because I go into a zone of semi-consciousness that is rather pleasurable. I'm not sure why coating things for frying doesn't put me there. It must take too much concentration.

Which seems weird.

But into the 400 degree oven they went. After about 20 minutes they came out.

(Apologies for the bad image quality...)

The onion was nicely cooked, and the coating had browned, but unevenly. I should have turned them over sooner than I did.

DiDi thought they were delish. I still held a grudge, so initially gave them an "OK" rating, but they grew on me.

Now I'm thinking of variants, not that I'm eager to enter back into THAT battle. I wonder how they would come out using ranch dressing mix in place of the flour, and regular chips instead of flavored? Possibly too salty?

DiDi's a southern girl. Maybe I could do the mise en place and she could take care of all the dredging.

I'll keep you posted.