You Should Put Onion Rings on Your Breakfast Sandwich

With the exception of bacon, the most common breakfast sandwich ingredients — eggs, cheese, sausage and ham — are quite soft. One can add textural contrast by toasting the bread (or adding hash browns or bacon). Or you could do all of that, and also add crispy, golden onion rings.

When I first had this idea, I did not think it was my best. I do not enjoy onion rings on burgers (oddly, I am a burger minimalist). I hate the way the onion slices slip out of their crispy homes like so many pungent snakes. But — as we recently discovered — waffling onion rings can fix the slippage issue. (If the breading is the onion snake’s home, waffling the whole thing causes the roof to cave in, trapping the snake and breaking its long, undulating spine.)

[referenced id=”932272″ url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2020/07/you-can-waffle-onion-rings-straight-from-the-freezer/” thumb=”https://www.gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2020/07/07/zin6h7m2nyhibosmg8pn-300×169.jpg” title=”You Can Waffle Onion Rings Straight From the Freezer” excerpt=”Eaters of onion rings have, at one point in their lives, bitten into an onion ring only to have the onion portion slide out of its crunchy home. It’s not the worst thing that can happen, but it is pretty frustrating, as the soft onion and fried batter are supposed…”]

Anyway. I had some frozen onion rings leftover from the waffling experiment, and decided a breakfast sandwich was the best way to use them up. Guess what? I was (once again) correct. This was the most textured breakfast sandwich I had ever enjoyed, and it tasted like onions and fried, two of my favourite flavours. (Fried is a flavour.) It’s a maximalist brunch kind of sandwich, perfect for mildly hungover mornings or late night munchies. Not only that, the rings help hold the sandwich together: The curved, grippy onion rings hold the eggs in place with their crunchy exteriors, preventing any sort of unseemly slippage. (This is especially helpful with fried eggs.)

You do not have to use waffled onion rings. Baked or fried will do just fine. Waffling is the quickest way to cook them however — just give ‘em a quick press while you fry or scramble your eggs. Once everything is fried/toasted/waffled/otherwise cooked, build your sandwich, starting with a solid foundation of onion rings on the bottom piece of bread. Add the eggs, and the cheese, and your meet of choice (if you eat meat). Close. Crunch down.