What is an "egg" actually doing in a flour recipe (onion rings) anyway?

My kid and I am just learning how to cook, and I keep seeing these recipes that call for "an egg".

My kid and I am just learning how to cook, and I keep seeing these recipes that call for "an egg".

You only have to ask one.

The egg is a binder. It causes the flour to stick to whatever is dipped in the egg wash. Ever tried to get egg off a plate. It's like glue. That's it's purpose.

The egg shell, if you are using it, would add crunch, I suppose. I would recommend against it.

You don't need to use egg, but it provides some volume. Tenpura batter has no egg (look it up). You can also just dust the onion rings with flour for a different end result.

OK. I guess the egg would provide more volume than, say, water.

PS: Sorry for the duplicate posts; I wrote to the aioe server admin Paolo, to see if he can debug why that happens. I'll use a different server for this response.

OK. Makes sense we'd want glue, since we're trying to get the flour to stick to the otherwise slippery onion rings.

A) The egg is a gluey binder.

PS: Sorry for the duplicate posts; I wrote to the aioe server admin Paolo, to see if he can debug why that happens. I'll use a different server that doesn't hiccup so much.

The egg is the binder. Not all recipes call for egg but most will call for egg and milk. There are different ways to make onion rings. Note that I have never actually made them but there are some allergen free (top 8) ones that use neither wheat, egg or dairy.

I.e., your egg batter will puff up more than just plain water. Here's mine - it's really good - you may need to add beer to the batter if it gets too thick.

Cut the rings and put them in ice water for at least 3 hours (use ice cubes and water, and put the container in the fridge).

Oil temp should be at least 375 deg. F. - in my big electric frypan,

Drain the rings and shake them in a bag of flour until they're well- coated. Submerse in the beer batter and drop in the oil. Fry until light brown, turning once. Keep warm on a rack on a cookie sheet in the oven - salt just before serving.

I don't like to put them on paper towel, because the grease kind of soaks back in - so I put out a cookie sheet with a small cooling rack on top, and load the onion rings on that to drain and dry - keep the oven about 200 or so (warm).

N.

Schoolin' sure am useful.