Blooming onions and fried chicken
Many years ago, whilst watching Buffy, Spike (the best Buffy character) mentioned Blooming Onions. The idea piqued my interest, and then I forgot about it. Many years later my old friend James tweeted me a link about them seeing if I fancied making them, and I did, but… I forgot again. A few months later my friend John sent me a tweet linking to them, James piled in and so we decided to get together and make them.
Whilst we had 15 litres of hot oil we fried up a whole jointed chicken.
You will need
- A big onion, as big as you can get
- An egg
- A mug of milk
- Plain flour - about a cup full
- Salt - couple of teaspoonfuls
- Paprika - couple of teaspoonfuls
- Ground coriander - couple of teaspoonfuls
- 15 litres of sunflower or peanut oil
- A deep fat frier
Do
We tried egg washing and flouring but it didn’t really stick, so we whisked up a batter and that worked better
- Put the deep fat frier on
- Whisk up everything except the onion
- Trim the top inch off the onion and then remove a core about an inch wide
- Cut vertically though the onion (not all the way) 8 or 12 times, evenly spaced
- Gently tease the “petals” open (this and the step before it are much harder than they sound)
- Dip in the batter and try to get it evenly stick to the onion
- Deep fry for about 10 mminutes
Result
Crispy crunchy delicious bits, soft sweat inside bits, kinda like an onion bhaji but not doughly at all. A tremendous faff but well worth it. Buffy gif suggests we should have stuck them in ice water so they open up and maybe we will next time.
