Vegan Awesome Football Sunday

Every Sunday, I eagerly await 1:00 for the NFL games to start. While many may not appreciate the greatest sport on the planet as much as I do, the event of swearing at the T.V. coupled with the presence of junk food can be enticing for anyone. It was a conversation with my friend Dwayne about junk food that led to this question, "Hey Brandon, are onion rings vegan?" Dwayne is not a vegan, however his question peaked my interest and while I'd yet to find vegan onion rings in a restaurant or in the frozen section of my local food stores, I responded with a simple "they could be." From that point on I began speculating on ways to make vegan onion rings. Naturally, it's easy to simply deep fry some onions, smother them in sauce and be content. However, if I was really going to do this, I wanted that fried shell encasing the onion ring. You know, the kind that is sturdy enough that when you take a bite, sometimes you rip the entire onion out and you're left holding a greasy shell of a ring. This is the kind of junk food I was looking for, and I'm happy to say that the following picture was the result:

Pretty awesome huh? Tasted fantastic and was perfect for football Sunday! So the next time somebody wants some greasy sports-watching food, try this out. You need a deep fryer with lots of oil. You can use Crisco or vegetable shortening, but I used vegetable oil.

Ingredients:

Bread Crumbs (I used Panko Bread Crumbs)

Two Onions

About 6 Cups of Oil for the deep fryer

About 1/4 Cup of Flour

Batter:

I used a basic vegan pancake batter from the book "Vegan with a Vengeance" by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, omitting all spices other than salt. You can use your favorite vegan pancake batter!

Directions:

Cut off the ends of the onions and peel the skin. Slice the onions whole so that rings are created. Dip each ring in flour, coating it. Then, dip the ring into the batter until completely covered, then dip into the bread crumbs coating each side until covered. Put on a plate, ready to be deep fried. Repeat this with all rings.

Deep fry the rings in batches according to your deep fryer's instructions and capacity.

Season how you like, using any dipping sauces you want and enjoy!

I didn't season them, I used Barbeque sauce, ketsup, and Cholula hot sauce. It was absolutely fantastic! Enjoy the food and enjoy the game!