Cooking & Baking
Related: About this forumOnion Things
I bought a stainless steel deep fry pot, and used it on a hot plate. This way I didn't need a fryer and I could be sure to avoid aluminum or forever chemical coatings. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DDK7XT87?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_1&th=1
It does fine for small batches so my wife and I used it kind of like a fondue pot. With potatoes sliced like French fries and let to dry with the potato starch left on them, they fried up wonderfully in some fresh peanut oil. I used some HEB black pepper catsup, but my wife enjoyed hers with just a bit of salt.
Then came the real wonder. A large onion chopped into bits like you would put in a salad, and a large garlic clove chopped into thin slices. All this was left to dry a bit. A bit of the onion and garlic was fried bare just to have some nibbles and to flavor the oil. Tasty morsels.
Then the onion and garlic were mixed in with:
2 tsp corn starch
1.5 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dried minced garlic
1 tsp onion powder
This was left for a bit to bind on the onion bits.
Then I took a cup of all purpose flour and 1 tsp of double acting baking powder. We used HEB brand baking powder because it doesn't have a lot of odd stuff in it, such as sodium aluminum sulfate. We avoid stuff that has aluminum in it. Beer was added and mixed until I got a pancake batter thickness. Then the onions were added and mixed in.
With a spoon I dribbled/dropped lumps into the hot oil to fry.
The result was a simple bit of joy. Crisp, light and tasty. I call them "Onion Things," since it is like an onion ring but chopped up and in a sloppy shaped ball with of course small onion bits that were battered and came loose in the sloppy manufacturing process. Delightful!
I used a spider spoon to manage the cooking. It worked perfectly with the pot. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08QZCJ42N?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_1
Tomorrow I plan to use the onion batter and coat some small chunks of tilapia. That will sit a bit and then get coated with Panko before I fry it. I will give you the results later.
MLAA
(19,616 posts)PurgedVoter
(2,647 posts)She says, "So crunchy, and so good."
I will have to stand strong and tell her we should only have this once a week. Too much fried food is probably not wise. But with fresh oil, it is quite a bit better than anything like it that you can get without cooking it yourself.