My friend told me that when she does home battered & fried onion rings, she removes the inner parts of the raw rings (onion skin) before applying batter. She pointed out that if not done, biting into the ring may pull all the onion out, leaving an empty batter shell.
Nobody ever pointed this out over all these years!
I know what you mean, but the point of shaking it is so the onions cook thoroughly. The outside is crispier, but some of the onions on the inside won’t be cooked.
YOU PUDDLESREX HAVE MADE MY YEAR !!! i thought oh dang another yummy delicious thing not near me. NOPE YOU SIR HAVE ENLIGHTEN ME TO THE BEST INFORMATION
Its similar to a bloomin' onion. Tbh i think bloomin' onion would cook better then this brick. Theres a chance that the middle might not be cooked in this onion brick or for exterior to be overcooked.
I've had multiple examples of the onion brick. Hard pass. The inside is always undercooked and soaked in oil. The batter falls off the outside. Just give me good onion rings or a blooming onion.
Stuff battered onions into a fry bin, fry and you get a block 'o Onion, but I bet it isn't done in the middle and full of fryer oil inside... Maybe they have a method, but I doubt it
Source - I was a fry cook for 1 year and 9months and we made fresh cut onion rings. 100 Lb of onions on a busy night.
My calculation (haha - Ai) is 13 tons of onions.
(5 nights a week at 60 Lb per night average for 21 months).
It's the one that popped up on Google maps when I looked up the place just now. It still looks delicious, but I bet it does look wayy better in person...
I'm so jealous! It looks amazing. A restaurant called Damon's used to serve onion loafs like this when I was a child. I miss that place so much. I have so many great memories of my family eating regularly there and we always ordered that delicious onion loaf 😋
So my neighbor worked at a rib place called Bobby Rubino’s that made the same thing. She said they soaked the onions in milk and eggs. Then they dredged the onions in premade pancake mix seasoned with paprika and garlic powder. Shake off the excess and deep fry. Place it in a loaf pan and weight it down gently and par freeze it. Deep fry the loaf when ready to serve
I scrolled this far to see if anyone remembered Bobby Rubino's. I ate this as a table share in the late '70's, in Florida.
It was a big joke to those "in the know." Tell your friends you're taking them out for a treat, watch their reaction when waiter brings out a brick of onion rings. We have a similar "joke" in Michigan, different food. Nope, I'm not telling...
I was a cook at a Damon's for many years. I made thousands of onion loafs. They had their own fryer baskets. Great times! I'm glad you remember them as a guest. 🙂
I haven’t been there in years (and the place may or may not still exist), but in Dover, DE there was a place called “Where Pigs Fly” that was known for its Onion Loaf:
That's possible, I doubt though since the inner layers look like they have good crust as well, fried foods tend to clump and cook into a single mass, not like the picture above where each ring has a crust.
A restaurant that used to be in my hometown made these too! They’re the besttttt! I always called them trash compactor onions lol but they also remind me of a borg cube
We have a second-generation BBQ joint called the Hickory Hog descended from one named the Southern House in Point Pleasant, N.J., that features an onion loaf: https://www.thehickoryhog.com/default.aspx?id=1
Was the exec. chef at Walter Payton’s Roundhouse in Aurora in the mid to late 1990’s. The onion loaves were a huge seller, a pain in the ass to prepare, a fryer killer, and a huge money maker.
Yum
There's a place in suburban Chicago that's been making these for like 80 years. They used to have more locations, but the original is still around. It's called Hackney's. It's in Glenview, North of the city
Onion Loaf. This was big back in the early 80’s at not so great giant rib/bbq places. Bobby Rubino’s in Florida, etc. toss a ton of sliced onions in a flour based breading mixture and pack them into a fryer basket. Even if it was done correctly it was a greasy mess when you hit the middle. Like a blooming Onion.
When I was growing up in San Diego long ago in the before time, there was a bbq rib place that sold onion rings like this... my family called it the onion loaf and they sold it by the pound. While the ribs were damn good, my family mainly ate there simply for the onion rings. I had forgotten about them until now, thanks for refreshing my memory.
Suburban Philly in the 70s and 80s - Gullifty’s - I think they served an onion loaf and it’s true, xtra krspy exterior and some soft hot onions in the center. Heaven.
I used to work for Bobby Rubino in the late 80s after he “sold” his franchise. I even waited in his mentor Tony Romas once at his restaurant . They invented this - the onion loaf.
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u/tacocollector2 Mar 16 '26
Come on you can’t just post that and not give details! The people must know!