As most of my friends know, I am a huge fan of Brenda Gantt’s and share her Cooking With Brenda Gantt’s posts often. She is the real deal, very down to earth and even with her now celebrity status, she is inviting to watch and I have truly learned some great tips from her. Not to steal any thunder from her, but I love to learn new ways, shortcuts, and ideas on how to prepare great food with simple instructions. This is how this blog topic has originated when I watched Brenda show us how to make a blooming onion her way.
I am not going to post Brenda’s video on the blooming onion as I feel you might miss a lot of good cooking videos so I invite you to follow her on Facebook, at Cooking with Brenda Gantt (look for the blue check for the authentic page).
She loves buttermilk drenching and used it in the video. She took her time and opened the onion to make sure the buttermilk coating got all the way down. She added seasonings and then placed the coated onion in flour and even taking more flour and pouring it into the petals of the onion. She has more patience than me was my thought at the time. Her blooming onion turned out fantastic and she took her now famous crunch test by biting it. Yes, total success for her.
Since I love a blooming onion and have paid a hefty price in restaurants, I decided to give a shot and I thought I followed her instructions to the letter. As you can see in the photo, mine looked okay but was not “Brenda crunchworthy” to the bottom of the onion.
. Not bad but not great so next try soon.
Hey, it was good but I could do better for my taste. So here comes the Arline wants the crunch idea. I had seen onion petals in restaurants as a menu item so what if I cut all the way through and release the petals prior to coating them and that is what I did for me. It worked and set the stage for the blog topic which you will see shortly.
Once I had found what was easy for me and produced the quality and taste I prefer, I thought I would share it on one of the cooking/baking groups I am a member. This is the focus of the blog, not the success of the onion petals. A lot, and I mean a lot of members loved my idea (it wasn’t a new idea as others have made them before). So many said they would try it this way, but a lot and I mean a lot of others told me how I guess me and Brenda should have iced watered the whole onion which seems like a lot of work and I wasn’t comfortable adding a lot of water to an already full of liquid onion. I am not faulting anyone for their ideas and it was a good response post and that is what we bloggers look for, the reaction.
What was intriguing was all of the attention over an onion. A blooming onion or onion petals? It fascinated me with all the hoopla over a simple food. I realized something very impressive. Maybe we have gone overboard with all of the freedom of social media that we feel a need to respond to each post and or blog or a group. It may be healthy but I saw strong opinions, yes very firm opinions over an onion. This led me to a deeper thought.
- If we took the same approach to homelessness, downtrodden and scarred people who even by their own fault fell into this trap of life, could we, would we solve this tragedy in our country?
- If we took the same approach to education of our young children and teenagers to see what and how we can improve the quality of good education and not meet the demands of those who want to think for our children, could we, would we solve and move our educational goals higher?
- I we took the same approach to caring for our elderly, who have given their time to take care of us when we were children and now left to live so frugally and sometimes even impoverished and left without proper medical care and treatment, could we, would we have a better outcome for their senior years?
I could go on and on listing all of the areas we can focus and insert input and solutions to the problems we, and others face. Onion, Spunion! Could it be possible to use the analogy of how so many responded to the Onion Saga, but never lift a finger or voice to the true causes of problems. I will give you a hint, It’s not due to an Onion so we can choose to make blooming onions or onion petals, or guess what, even Onion Rings. My point is there are many options to solve and recommend how to do the best activity to produce lasting and high quality outcomes.
(C) Copyright 2012-2021 Arline Miller of Sipping Cups of Inspiration with all rights and privileges reserved. Third party material is sourced if known for credit references.
