Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Waffling Leftovers: Onion Rings

Yup, another installment of Waffling Leftovers, my never ending quest to put random leftovers into a waffle iron, and see what happens (you can read all about my previous adventures here!)

By now, you know I've tried waffling just about every class of leftovers, sweet, savory, main dishes, side dishes, breakfast, dessert ... I've done it all.

But somehow, I've never tried anything like simple french fries, onion rings, and the like.  I have no idea why.  I think I usually go for more interesting starting points.

It turns out, a waffle iron works absolutely fine for this, at least, for onion rings ...
The Original: Leftover Onion Ring.
I started with, well, an onion ring.  The original was great, a fresh, crispy, greasy in the right ways, onion ring, from a local Korean place (yeah,  I don't know what was Korean about it ...).

Onion rings, for me, have about a 2 minute shelf life when fresh, and after that, I kinda dislike them.  Lukewarm, soft, soggy onion rings just have no place in my life.

But, I am always generally pretty happy reheating them in a toaster oven, although it takes effort, flipping them every couple minutes, making sure they don't over cook.  The window of getting them perfectly crunchy again vs way too crisp sometimes feels like 20 seconds.

So I decided to see how the waffle iron would do, potentially requiring less work (no flipping!), and less diligence, while still giving me crispy greatness.
Leftover Onion Ring: Waffling.
I started with a tester, alongside another experiment (not really a success, leftover autumn vegetable gratin, you can read about that here).

350*, and I did nothing to it, just threw it in.  Which, is exactly what I wanted.  No work.
Waffled Onion Ring!
It took only a few minutes, and when I checked on it, I saw visible char marks, and it felt crispy overall.  Well, that was easy!

I plucked it out, let it cool enough to handle, pulled out my favorite honey mustard and ranch dipping sauces, and eagerly dunked it in both.

The verdict?  Yup, that *totally* worked.  I loved the extra crisp bite where the waffle iron made contact, and the rest was crisp, but still moist.  Really, exactly what I was looking for, and I found that I liked the two crunch levels even more than a standard ring that is all uniform.

This was a big success, no question.  And so much easier than manually flipping and watching.  I've since done it a number of times, and been absolutely thrilled with the easy results.  100% recommend.

Next, I'm definitely trying french tries, I think they'd work just about the same ...

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