SPONSORED POST: Beer Battered Onion Rings

I don't know if you've noticed but I've been subtley hinting at my New Belgium adventure in the last weeks. See here and here:

As part of FoodBuzz's Tastemaker's program, New Belgium Brewing Company sponsored tastemakers to create a dish that either incorporates their beer or pairs with one of their beers. I've only had Fat Tire Amber Ale before and wanted to buy a few individual bottles of each of their other beers to taste. These were not available at Safeway so we got the case of Fat Tire, Ranger, and Mighty Arrow at Bevmo. For the last couple weeks, I've been experimenting in the kitchen with new recipes. I'll be blogging my trial recipes, whether they were a success or not, with the last recipe being my submission to New Belgium's facebook recipe contest. Come join me as I share my failed attempt at cooking with beer.

The culprits: Fat Tire Amber Ale, a light crisp flavor. Ranger India Pale Ale: darker, more bitter in my opinion. Mighty Arrow Pale Ale: a nice medium

I know nothing about cooking with beer which is partly why I chose to enter New Belgium's tastemaker program. I need to expand my skills and learn to work outside my comfort zone of Asian foods. At first I read the New Belgium website for food pairing suggestions but ultimately decided that in true newbie chef fashion, I was just going to fudge around. First up,

BEER BATTERED ONION RINGS

This was just a practice run and I knew I wasn't going to submit this recipe, so therefore, originality was not important. Enter, Guy Fieri's popular beer battered onion ring recipe, not followed to a T. If there's one thing I suck at more than singing, it is following directions in the kitchen, so here is my version of how it's done based off Guy's directions.

One large yellow onion, cut into large rings

Left: Flour with salt and pepper

Right: Flour with 1 bottle of Fat Tire IPA

Coat the rings with the flour on the left, then dip into the batter on the right. Guy's directions call for dipping the onion rings in buttermilk, then into the flour mixture, then into the batter. I didn't have buttermilk, I didn't want to run to the store, buttermilk sounds fattening anyway, but mostly, I didn't think it would matter. BOY DOES IT MATTER...

Frying the first test batch of rings

removing with a strainer

Onions rings into calamari! Just kidding. These were pretty crispy and tasted oniony but with little batter. The fault of skipping on buttermilk. Buttermilk would have made the flour stick, which would have made the batter stick.

Not realizing my mistake, I thickened up the batter with more flour and got these.

Still not realizing my mistake, I triple fried the rings. That is, frying them, taking them out, dipping in more batter, frying again, repeat, etc.

 While it's not a success, these weren't half bad, especially the triple fried batch. I did taste the beer but it was not overbearing and actually makes onion rings taste better. If I had done the buttermilk step, maybe the texture of the rings would be right. Kind of a fun mistake to make but your house, clothes, and hair will smell and feel greasy for days. Anyway, Phil ended up having to finish these because they were just too much and then he proceeded to run 20 miles to do damage control. I kidd I kidd. Deep fry with caution my friends!

Stay tuned for the next installment of New Belgium's sponsored posts.