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Monday, January 12, 2009

Mmmm... fried food

I made an awesome impromptu dinner last night, if I do say so myself. We were off on our "menu plan" and I had nothing prepared or in mind. We did however, have an old(er) single piece of steak in the freezer and a ton of giant onions sitting in the pantry. Onions that are just begging to be made into onion rings. So I searched the internet for some good ideas and a great onion ring recipe. Boy did I luck out and find a great one!

First I thawed the steak, cubed it up and coated them to make steak "bites".
Here's how:
I mixed up 1 egg and a quarter cup of milk in a small bowl and let the steak bites soak for a mintue while I combined 1 cup of flour, 1 tsp of steak seasoning, some extra garlic powder and a little bit of cayenne in a gallon ziplock bag. I took the steak from the egg dip and put the pieces in the bag, sealed it up and shook to coat them all. Ryan fried them in the deep fryer. You can of course, just fry these in oil on the stove. The FryDaddy is sooo easy though! I think they fried for about 5 minutes in two batches.

Meanwhile, I went to work on the onion rings. I used this recipe and here's my low fuss process...
Put the 1 1/4 cup flour, 1 tsp baking powder and 1 tsp salt into a ziplock bag. I made nice big thick slices from our giant onion and threw them in the bag to coat. Then you fished them out and put them aside on a plate while you add 1 egg and 1 cup of milk to the ziplock bag. Seal it up and mash it all around good, mixing the milk/egg and flour mixture till it's a smooth batter. Then put the onions back in and work around with your hands to coat. Remove the onion rings and place on a rack over the sink or a baking pan and let the excess batter drip off of the rings. Put about a cup of breadcrumbs (I only had italian seasoned breadcrumbs handy) in a shallow dish and when the onion rings have stopped dripping, place them one at a time in the bread crumbs to coat. Then fry 'em up, just about a minute and a half on each side.

These are sooo good. Very simple flavor, but they are really so good! I might play around with it a bit next time because I have a Garlic Parmesan seasoning I thought may be really good with these, but honestly they are perfectly good on their own. I'm excited for this summer, because I'm predicting these will be a huge hit at our barbeques this summer.
I'm thinking I can make up a good batch somewhat ahead of time, have them battered and coated and ready to just have Ryan man the fryer when we're ready to eat!

Anyway, we enjoyed these steak bites, fabulous onion rings and a great big salad last night for dinner. Sawyer scarfed down the onion rings; I think he probably had close to a dozen rings! He loved 'em! I did too. I had to make myself stop. Luckily I only made one onion. Mind you, it was a HUGE onion, but at least the pile didn't go on and on like it could have, had I sliced up another. Try them!

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