Tag: quarantine cooking

Recipe: Bacon Onion Rings!

Our family’s Zoom-based cooking competition’s featured ingredient this week: sweet onions! My dad is something of an onion freak (understatement) and selected the ingredient. I LOVE onions. I put them in all kinds of things — sweet, yellow, white, raw, cooked, sautéed, caramelized, you name it. With the challenge being to cook a sweet onion dish, I pondered, Googled, and landed on this: bacon onion rings!

These are literally doubled up concentric rings of onion wrapped tightly with thick-cut slabs of bacon. Tossed with brown sugar and a few seasonings, secured with toothpicks to ensure prettiness and served plain or with any assortment of dips, you will LOVE these. The onion turns out juicy, the bacon is sweet and chewy, and your house will smell DIVINE.

My partner is used to yummy food but even he was impressed. After trying it, he said, “This food may end up being how I die.” So there!

Also, I did try making these on a rack, versus right on the pan. Nope. Not as good. You want to do these right on the pan. It will help with them getting that syrupy sweet build-up and glistening caramelization. Yum!

The family put forth some truly impressive sweet onion dishes but this won the day — because, bacon.

Bacon-Wrapped Onion Rings

Ingredients:

  • About 8 pieces of thick-cut bacon1 large Walla Walla sweet onion (WW is preferred, though other sweet onions will work) 
  • About a half-cup of  brown sugar
  • Onion powder
  • Garlic powder
  • Black or cayenne pepper
  • Salt*

Makes about 5-6 onion rings 

Directions:

  • Bring bacon out of fridge about a half hour before cooking so it is more pliable.
  • Line a large baking sheet with foil, spray with cooking oil.
  • Slice the bulb and root ends off the onion, then turn it on its side and slice into 1/2 inch thick rings.
  • For your onion ring, use two concentric rings — just one on its own won’t hold up to the long cooking time. I liked the medium-sized rings the best. The smallest are too small to thread the bacon around, and the largest will definitely use two pieces of bacon, so this is a data- and calorie-driven decision! 
  • Holding the two rings together, begin wrapping one piece of bacon around the ring. Stretch and pull as you go to maximize bacon use. You may need an additional 1/2 or a full piece of bacon to complete this. 
  • Use a long double-pointed toothpick to secure the bacon in place. This isn’t totally necessary but it will help your bacon maintain its prettiness. 
  • Once you’ve wrapped your rings…
  • Scoop your brown sugar into a shallow dish or pie pan; sprinkle with the onion and garlic powder, pepper and salt, and mixed up with a fork.
  • One at a time, press your rings into the brown sugar mix, both sides. Use your fingertips to rub the mixture around the surfaces of your rings.
  • Put the rings on your baking sheet, place in oven, and set oven to 350 degress.
  • Note: you do NOT preheat the oven. Letting the food come to heat with the oven helps the bacon warm and maintain its shape and meld together.
  • After 30 minutes, remove pan and gently and carefully flip your rings.
  • You may want to use two spatulas to hold them together as you flip. The toothpicks can also really help here because they won’t be hot! Another vote for toothpicks!
  • After 30 more minutes, remove the rings, let them cool. 
  • Plate and sprinkle with minced parsley and serve!
  • We like them with a yogurt-based blue cheese dip, but it would be good with Sriracha mayo, ranch, or any number of dippers!

Happy cooking!

Recipe: Lost Eggs

Broder Cafe is a favorite Portland spot. Known for niche Nordic cuisine, creative breakfast cocktails, and long waits that find clientele hanging out on the sidewalk out front with steaming mugs of coffee, it’s a pretty quintessential Rose City brunch experience. My go-to dish there: Lost Eggs.

Not knowing when I’ll be able to a) travel again b) travel to Portland c) go to Broder, and not finding a decent copy cat recipe of this dish online, I decided to find these Lost Eggs in my own kitchen. Here’s what I did:

Ingredients:

  • 1 egg
  • Some cream
  • A couple handfuls of spinach
  • Ham lunch meat (or something nicer, but hey, this is quarantine cooking so we work with what we have!)
  • Dried parsley
  • Paprika
  • Olive oil
  • Bread crumbs or panko
  • Grated parmesan
  • Green onion

Directions:

Keep in mind I was completely winging it, and I would make some adjustments next time, which I’ll note here.

  1. Put a splash of olive oil in a nonstick pan and let it heat up over medium heat.
  2. Dice up a couple pieces of thin ham lunch meat, add to pan, let it cook a few minutes until it starts to pucker up and change color and get a little crisp.
  3. Add two handfuls of fresh spinach and toss and turn until the spinach wilts.
  4. Add a generous splash of cream. The spinach should be coated. In hindsight I think I used a tad bit too much, so I would say add a tablespoon at a time so you don’t overdo it.
  5. Add a couple dashes of paprika, a pinch of salt, pepper, and a dash of parsley flakes.
  6. Cook so that the cream is slightly bubbling, and let it cook down.
  7. Transfer spinach mix to an individual meal-size, oven-safe baking dish. I used a Le Creuset dish and I sprayed it with canola oil first.
  8. Crack an egg into a ramekin or small bowl. You might be tempted to crack it straight on to the spinach mix and sure, if you’re a risk taker, you can roll like that. But I always use an interim transfer dish to be safe because egg shells are lame.
  9. Use a spoon to make an indent in the center of the spinach mixture. Pour the egg from the ramekin into said indent.
  10. Bake at 400 for 15 minutes or until the egg white has set. Note: I took it out after 15 and it didn’t seem the white had set so I gave it 5 more, and I cooked it too long for my liking. I also didn’t think through the broiling step (see steps 11-12). So next time I would pull it at 15.
  11. Add one more sliced up piece of ham to the top, sprinkle with break crumbs, add parmesan.
  12. Broil for 3 minutes or until top is crunchy and toasted.

If you succeed, here is what you’ll get: a rich, creamy sauce with that earthy spinach, sweet and savory bits of chewy ham, that gooey velvet egg with a slightly runny yolk, and that perfect salty crunch from the toasted bread and cheese bits on top. So many great flavors, textures and colors here!

When you eat this at Broder, they serve it in a small cast iron pan with two eggs (instead of my one) and thick-cut toast for dipping. The toast would be a nice touch. A mimosa would have been divine too.

This is definitely not an every day or even every week or every month dish — the cream puts it in the “treat” category for sure. But dang it made for a delicious morning.

Happy cooking!