When Bill and I got married, he told me flat out that he didn’t cook. “I will take you out to dinner any night that you don’t want to cook,” he said. “Or we can order pizza any time. But you should know starting off that I don’t cook. I never will. I don’t know how and I don’t care to learn.” Boom.

Fair enough. He has always taken care of the yard and maintained the house splendidly. Now he does that for two houses. I have no complaints. I enjoy cooking, so it all works out.

The other night I was in the mood for a hamburger and onion rings, and we have a Fuddruckers very near our house here in Mesa. I think Fuddruckers is my favorite hamburger joint, and they all went away in Colorado. So we eat at our Fuddruckers here fairly often.

But I started thinking that maybe instead of going out for hamburgers, I could make hamburgers right here in our little home on our little grill. I would get good ground beef, bleu cheese crumbles, and all of the fixins’ that we like at Fuddruckers. Why, I could even make onion rings!

“I’m going to make onion rings,” I said to Bill.

“Great,” he replied. “I’ll help.”

What the……? I’m not sure he has ever offered to help cook. He doesn’t even grill. I think the fact that he currently has no major projects to work on has left him totally confused. Has too much idle time made him forget that he doesn’t like to cook?

“Seriously?” I asked him. “But you don’t like to cook.” Perhaps he’d forgotten.

He proceeded to tell me that when he was a freshman at the University of Illinois, he worked as a bartender at a joint that specialized in homemade onion rings. He claimed he could fry up onion rings as quick as a short-order cook, and he told me they were delicious. Cut-up rings of onions soaked in buttermilk, dipped in a beer batter, and then fried to a golden brown crunch. Wow.

So, he and I made onion rings to accompany our hamburgers that I grilled. He did indeed make up the batter, dip the raw onion rings into said batter, and then drop them into the hot oil on our stove. He fried them to a crispy brown, salted them, and served them up with our burgers.

My friends, they were magnificent. Golden rings of yummy onion. Maybe the best onion rings I’ve ever had. Who knew?

I’m hoping there are perhaps other epicureal mysteries he will yet reveal to me.

Beer Battered Onion Rings, from Recipes Every Man Should Know

Ingredients

1-3/4 c. all-purpose flour

1 t. seasoned salt

1 t. baking powder

½ t. black pepper

1 12-oz bottle beer, preferably dark

2 large sweet onions, such as Bermuda, Vidalia or Walla Walla, slicewd into ½ in. thick rounds and separated into rings

Canola oil for frying

Process

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, seasoned salt, baking powder, and pepper. Slowly add beer. Set aside.

Place onion rings in a bowl of ice water and let chill for 15 minutes. Remove onion from water and pat dry with paper towels. Fill a medium heavy bottomed pot with 2 inches of canola oil and heat to 370 degrees. (It’s ready when a little batter dropped into the oil bubbles amd floats immediately to the top.) Dip each onion ring in batter, letting excess drip into the bowl.

Fry onion rings in batches, being careful not to over crowd. Cook 1-2 minutes per side or until golden brown. If they’re too dark, lower the heat. Transfer to a paper-towel-lined plate to drain.

Nana’s Notes: In deference to Bill’s gig at the college bar, instead of soaking the onion rings in ice water, I soaked them in cold buttermilk. He removed them from the buttermilk, placed them in the batter, let the excess batter drip from the onion ring, and then placed them in the hot oil. Immediately after removing them and placing them on the paper-towel-lined plate, he salted them. They were delicious. But my grease-covered stove afterwards reminded me why we won’t be making homemade onion rings frequently!