I love these “Blooming Onions” or “Chrysanthemum Onions”. For too few restaurants offer them and one London Burger chain, Black & Blue have recently stopped. I asked why & they said that food safety requirements meant the frier had to be cleaned totally each night & that, frankly, it wasn’t worth making them any more.
I’ve done them at home with moderate success. The trick, I was told, was to cut, carefully, diwn to the heel of the onion, to then put the asterisk onion into ice cubed water & they will spread as if on a hinge. Then cover then thoroughly with your batter and dip then into a fryer with kitchen tongues asap.
And you WILL get a messy kitchen & messy fryer.
Almost not worth the effort. But it’s wonderful when it works.
Cut deep incisions to the root end of the beastly onion and take out the middle (it’s too dense to coat properly) and then sit in iced water (it opens like a scallion tassel you decorate salads with if you feel posh) until just before cooking
Then dry off with kitchen roll and dip into a tempura batter (a mix of plain and cornflour 50/50 and ICE cold fizzy water made to a thickish batter) and dip into clean oil (it’s OK to use the same oil to cook multiple onions in but naught else as the batter takes any flavour in the oil
I worked as pastry chef in a posh restaurant that did blooming onions and while I taught the head chef how to make assorted pastry he taught me things like tempura and in busy times I would be drafted in to woman the fryers
Very interesting, Twelly, thank you. And you are, clearly A Nexpert My onion petals looked shoite, tasted good and the kitchen wasn’t a mess after cooking. No deep-fat fryer, just the small saucepan we use for frying spicy prawns. I used groundnut oil - would that adversely affect the stickage of the batter? I’ll have another go, tomorrow. Tonight’s meal will be Teriyaki salmon, 5-spice rice and steamed broccoli (I can’t muck that up).
I certainly wouldn’t claim to be a hexpert. After a year sussing out the vagaries of the current flour/yeast combination I use I can still get it wrong.
Which reminds me that a birfday cake is required today, so I must head out in search of Irel/Camp coffee…
Soo the batter should be thick and it will leave bits open to the oil
Groundnut should work well having a high smoke point
I use a wok for deep fat frying on the occasional times I deep fry
I have fallen in lurve with rape seed oil as it has a very high smoke point and a gentler flavour than olive oil so I have switched to it for a lot of my cooking
It does super slow cooked fried eggs
ooo the Bull is still on light diet so I feel a fried egg and crispy bacon buttie coming on for my dinner
My onion petals looked shoite, tasted good and the kitchen wasn’t a mess after cooking. No deep-fat fryer, just the small saucepan we use for frying spicy prawns. I used groundnut oil - would that adversely affect the stickage of the batter? I’ll have another go, tomorrow. Tonight’s meal will be Teriyaki salmon, 5-spice rice and steamed broccoli (I can’t muck that up).
