Need onion ring help.

Soak your onions in ice water before drying, coating and frying.

cc0112453 said:

I don't eat a lot of fried foods for heath reasons but I do love it once in a while. I recently
bought one of those nice rectangular, stainless steel deep fryers with a nice basket. Look
professional but is for the home. My problem is that when I do batter fried things like fish and
onion rings (especially onion rings) they stick to the basket. When I try and pry them loose I
usually loose some of the outer coating. With Onion rings it is especially bad. I don't even make
them because they just get all broken up (me to) when I try and pry them loose from the basket. Can
anyone give me any pointers. Do I need a thicker batter? I used a commercial batter mix and make it
to the consistency of pancake batter, maybe a little thinner. It coats them nicely but as soon as I
drop them in the basket, they fall to the bottom and get stuck. Help would be greatly appreciated.

Remove nospam to respond.

"try frying them without the basket in, and then use a slotted spoon to take them out and any bits
of batter left behind.only do a few at a time so they do not stick together. had the same trouble
with batter covered pork balls for a chinese meal.

cc0112453 said:

I don't eat a lot of fried foods for heath reasons but I do love it once in a while. I recently
bought one of those nice rectangular, stainless steel deep fryers with a nice basket. Look
professional but is for the home. My problem is that when I do batter fried things like fish and
onion rings (especially onion rings) they stick to the basket. When I try and pry them loose I
usually loose some of the outer coating. With Onion rings it is especially bad. I don't even make
them because they just get all broken up (me to) when I try and pry them loose from the basket.
Can anyone give me any pointers. Do I need a thicker batter? I used a commercial batter mix and
make it to the consistency of pancake batter, maybe a little thinner. It coats them nicely but as
soon as I drop them in the basket, they fall to the bottom and get stuck. Help would be greatly
appreciated.

I'm assuming that you put that basket down and then drop the onion rings into the hot oil rather
than putting the freshly coated onion rings into the basket and then lower it. That last guarantees
that they'll weld themselves to the basket.

Several possibilities:
1) your batter is too thin
2) your batter is too thick

Go to a source that gives you a scratch batter and see if that's any better. I suspect it might be.
Baking powder can lose its strength, fats can oxidize and change characteristics. Mixes make it hard
to see those effects.

3) your oil isn't hot enough (should be at least 365F)
4) your oil isn't deep enough
5) Lower them into the oil instead of dropping

Pastorio

Several other people gave excellent suggestions. Here is what I have to add:

First, do not overload the basket. This is true for anything you fry in a home deep frier. Home
friers simply do not have powerful enough heating coils. When you add in a bunch of frozen or room
temperature food you take heat from the oil. The more you add, the lower the temperature. This means
longer cooking times and potentially problems like you have with food sticking to the basket or to
itself (i.e. an onion ring log).

Second, don't just let the food sit until it is done -- shake it up like they do at fast food
restaurants. If you shake the basket it forces the food to move around (assuming the basket isn't
overloaded), so there is less of a chance it will stick to the basket. I have no proof, but I also
think it helps heat the food evenly given the generally inadequat heating coils in home deep friers.

Deep frying does not have to be unhealthy, whatever your subjective definition of "healthy" is (low
fat? low carb? vegetarian?). If you pick the right oil in which to fry food, pick the right kind of
batter, etc, you can cook moderately healthy food no matter what diet you are on. Try Googling this
newsgroup, this topic has come up several times in the past few months.

--
John Gaughan
johngaughan.netjohngaughan.netOpen ↗
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Quoted message said:

"try frying them without the basket in, and then use a slotted spoon to take them out and any bits
of batter left behind.only do a few at a time so they do not stick together. had the same trouble
with batter covered pork balls for a chinese meal.

you could try heating the basket with the oil so that the onion rings fry instantly on contact and
therefore not stick Diane