Thanksgiving IS a time for Onion Rings!

Thanks to the wonderous GREEN BEAN CASSEROLE, Onion Rings have a place at the Thanksgiving table. I would like to make just plain onion rings a Thanksgiving tradition at my house.

Ollie's Station Restaurant, Red Fork, OK

RESTAURANT: Ollie's Station
LOCATION: Route 66, Red Fork, OK
SIZE: Side
NUMBER AND SIZE OF RINGS: 8, 2-5 inches-- HUGE!
COST: As a side dish selection with many meals
Big, thick traditional onion rings. Coating appears to be crispy panko/ bread crumbs. This restaurant has an awesome menu with tons of fried specialties. Try the fried sweet potatoes, okra, green tomatoes too.

Sonic

RESTAURANT: Sonic
LOCATION: Tulsa, OK and all over the US
SIZE: Regular
NUMBER AND SIZE OF RINGS: 6, averaging 3 inches in diameter
COST: $1.69 plus tax
I even got 7 ketchup packets, even though I only used 3.

Sonic must be pretty proud of their onion rings- they have a HUGE neon sign on their drive-ins to advertise them. In many "best of" ratings sites, people have actually voted Sonic as their favorite place for onion rings in several locales.
They are pretty darn good. From the moment they enter your car, it smells like the midway at the state fair. Aside from the most intoxicating onion ring smell around, they have a unique taste and texture. One of the few homemade type looks mixed with a mass-produced type of breadcrumb texture. And the sugar, LOTS and LOTS of sugar is put into the batter of these babies. I would be as bold to say that perhaps even high fructose corn syrup-- anyone reading who works for sonic is free to challenge this assumption. But feel free to look at the nutrition information for these babies on their website. DIABETICS BEWARE. I couldn't have more than 10 grams of sugar in any meal (the regular size has 14 grams) when I was pregnant and had gestational diabetes, and could only eat an onion ring or two!

Buttermilk Onion Rings- title recipe

I made the onion rings that you see pictured on the header during a severe onion ring craving a couple of weeks ago. I was so in love with them that I took a picture!
They are very simple to make and from my favorite recipe!
The recipe comes from Sara Moulton, our food network friend.
Buttermilk Onion Rings

Ingredients

• 4 large onions
• 1 quart buttermilk
• 2 cups flour
• Salt
• Pepper
• Chili powder
• Oil for frying

Directions

Slice 4 large onions into 1/4-inch rings. Place in large bowl and cover with buttermilk. Season with salt and pepper. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Place 2 cups flour in a shallow dish. Season with salt and pepper. Dredge onion rings in seasoned flour. Dip again in buttermilk, then in seasoned four.

Fry in batches, in 350 degree oil for 2 to 3 minutes until golden.

Drain on paper towels. Let oil come back to temperature before frying next batch.

Onion rings of my childhood

When I was a small child, my mom would make onion rings every Sunday. During church, I would sit there thinking of the onion rings I would get to eat as soon as we got home. There are SIX kids in my family, so yes, we would occasionally fight over the onion rings. I remember these onion rings often being of the "onion ringer" variety, which was the least expensive. Onion ringers are the type where the inside onions are all ground up. So, they are kind of "fake" onion rings. But we loved them, nonetheless. My sister had an interesting technique for savoring her onion rings. She would break them into small pieces, so we really couldn't tell how many she had actually hoarded. Then, she would wait until we were all done with our onion rings and savor them in front of us. Brilliantly Cruel.
The store nearest our house didn't carry "real" packaged onion rings, so we would only get packaged with whole onions in them if my mom ventured out to other stores that were having sales.
Occasionally, my mom would make homemade onion rings. We would eat ourselves sick. We experimented for what seemed like years to make the perfect homemade onion ring. We even went through a "beer batter" stage, which was pretty hardcore, considering that we are LDS and don't drink! We would sit and conjecture what she would do if someone from church saw her buying beer at the store. That didn't last long, as we realized the beer-battered ones weren't quite as good as some of the other recipes.