The Amish Cook: Old-Fashioned Crunchy Onion Rings

Jump to Recipe

It’s been hanging in the balance for days, even weeks. For some people in church, anticipation mounted at the thought of home schooling our children this term, for others with multiple children, it looked like a tall order. We talked, we weighed pros and cons. Our children, who loved school last year, declared they would like to have school at home this year. In my heart I wanted to teach them more than I could ever tell, yet I realized that daily my time was already stretched to the max as I did my best to care for our six young children and squeeze in house work where I could. I wondered when I would write the column.

I know that many of you have been forced to home-school this past year with COVID. Really now, I cannot imagine what it was like for you, especially for you who were balancing a job and home-schooling children, all in one. For me, my entire life revolves around our children day and night, so it’s not like I have another job to juggle, (besides writing to all of you, and I do not consider it a job at all. You all have become friends and family).

The young girl who had planned to teach our lower grades this fall started courting this summer. Concerned that she would not have adequate energies to put in school while entering this new phase in her life, she opted to not teach while dating. Though we hated to see her go, we released her knowing that she made the wiser choice.

As we pursued various options on who could teach the lower grades in her place, each door closed. Finally, we questioned if perhaps having the children being taught at home by their mothers could be the thing to do for the upcoming term. I told God how much I wanted to teach my children and have them with me whole days, and yet how I didn’t know how I could manage doing it. I simply left it in His hands. Julia hoped we wouldn’t find anyone to teach. With Daniel being on the school board he made more calls than I could count, and discussed more options than I could tell. Still nothing materialized.

Last week we spoke with a young girl from Ohio, who we idealized as a Godly example and a dedicated teacher at heart. It was our last attempt; if this was to fall through, homeschooling was the next option. Once more we prayed earnestly for God to have His way. She promised to get back with an answer first of the week.

This afternoon I had a surprise waiting for me when the children and I came home from being at a tea party. Jumping off the cart, I tied up the pony and headed toward the barn where Daniel was working on his old Ferguson tractor. “Well, do you want to know what her answer was?” he asked.

I gasped, “Did she call?” Daniel’s teasing grin spread across his face. “Okay, please tell me!” I urged.

“She said she would’ve liked to teach, but didn’t feel God leading her in that direction.”   Shrieking with delight, at the thought of teaching my children, I forgot that I was not a little girl myself, as I sprinted toward the children. Stooping down I caught both Julia and Austin in my arms. “You’re going to be my students!” I declared, looking into their eager faces. In a moment Hosanna was there too. Though she hadn’t been impressed earlier about the idea of having kindergarten at home she was obviously shifting gears.

So here we are, getting all geared up for the term; no, we do not expect an easy term without difficulties to work through, but I do trust that the same Guide that has brought us so far won’t drop us, as long as we keep crying out to Him! And as Daniel always says, “If we expect things to go perfectly or just as we want them to, we will become disappointed and frustrated.” So with that in mind, we’ll take the first step of school at home and we will keep you posted on how it’s turning out.

Now here I am, it’s 11:30 at night, I’m too wound up to sleep. You know, just maybe I did discover when to do the column, even when I’m a homeschooling mom! Okay, who’s going to have a midnight snack with me? Well, I won’t be cooking to much right now, but I do know one thing, I’m hungry for onion rings, so that it will be tomorrow night for dinner!

Editor's Recipe Notes and Photos

I love, love home-made onion rings, thickly battered and dipped in barbecue sauce. Man, those are so good. The best onion rings are county fair type, dipped and battered and warm.

This was the first time I had ever made homemade onion rings before and I admit I was a bit intimidated. Deep frying, to me, conjures up images of splattering grease, thick smoke, and, just mess, none of those things which I could imagine my wife enjoying me doing to our kitchen. But I did a little research before trying this recipe and the key is to find an oil with a high smoke point. Those oils include sunflower oil and avocado oil, none of which I had...here is a good guide and article about the topic. I did research this a bit and found olive oil has a high smoke point so I started filling a deep pot with olive oil and then realized that that is pretty expensive oil and we didn't have a ton and I didn't think my wife would appreciate me depleting the family olive oil supply. So I did about half olive oil, half vegetable oil, and threw in a couple tablespoons of sesame oil that we had on hand.

I couldn't find my thermometer, Gloria's recipe recommends heating the oil to 350. If you don't have a thermometer, I did some research online and found that if you just put it on medium for about 10 minutes that should be sufficient. And that worked out just fine for me. On a couple of occasions as I fried the onion rings the oil would start to smoke and I just removed the pot from the burner for a minute or two to cool it back down and that worked just fine.

So, the verdict? Man, these were good. So, so good. The batter didn't adhere perfectly to the rings (I'll be honest, I didn't measure everything out in Gloria's recipe, I didn't feel like dirtying a bunch of measuring spoons, etc. so I just eyeballed a lot of stuff, I think had I followed the recipe exact the batter would have been a little thicker and might have adhered perfectly to the onion, but mine certainly- as you can see - didn't turn out badly at all. Any little "crispies" of batter than fell off on the plate, I just ate and enjoyed those! So, yeah, if you are a little intimidated by deep frying like I am, don't be, these were easy and well worth the work. I mean, yes, you can go to a restaurant and order some onion rings,but there was just something very satisfying about making them myself.

I just used two large white onions, but I am sure yellow or red would work just fine. In fact, probably either of those would have slightly better flavor.

I just "eyeballed" the batter, but follow the recipe exactly for best results.

I just took a fork and swished the onion ring around in the batter and then dripped the excess off before throwing them into the pot.

Gloria calls for frying the rings one at a time, and that is what I did - at the beginning. But then I started getting impatient. I mean, if you have 30 onion rings and each one takes a minute (say 30 seconds per side), well that can take kind of a while. So after about 10 minutes of frying onion rings one at a time, I said, heck with the instructions and started doing several at a time. That worked out fine, you have just have stay on top of everything and make sure you are turning the rings over and, yeah, I wouldn't do it one at a time.

I patted grease off with a paper towel and put them on a plate and dipped them in ketchup. Good stuff.

I guess I thought they turned out so well and I wanted to take pictures of them from every angle!

They are great with ketchup!

I like the thick, fat onion rings.

I love onion rings dipped in barbecue sauce, those are my absolute favorite, so I added some bbq sauce to the plate. Good stuff!

Jump to:

• 🧅 Old-Fashioned Crunchy Onion Rings
• 🧅 More Amish Onion Recipes
• 🖨️ Full Recipe

🧅 Old-Fashioned Crunchy Onion Rings

• 1 egg
•  ¼ cup milk
•   ½ cup flour
•   ½ teaspoon baking powder
•    ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon seasoning salt
• 2 tablespoon vegetable oil
•  2 onions
• cooking oil or shortening for deep frying

📋 Instructions

1. Pour one inch oil into a deep frying pan, heat to 375 degrees.
2. Beat egg then add rest of ingredients.
3.  Cut onions in ¼-inch rings.
4. Separate rings and dip into batter, one at a time, then drop into hot oil.
5. Fry until golden brown; flip and continue to fry other side.
6. Place onto a paper towel-lined platter.

🧅 More Amish Onion Recipes

Oven-Baked Onion Pie - So delicious!

Creamy Homemade Onion Dip - Wow!

Easy After-Church 5-1 Casserole - One of those five ingredients is onion!

Pennsylvania Dutch Bacon and Onion Mashed Potatoes- so good!

🖨️ Full Recipe