• The “split shell.” This occurs when everything appears to be going fine until all of a sudden, through some as-yetundiscovered mechanism, the batter crust spontaneously splits in half Oil rushes into the gap, rendering the onion leathery and burnt • The dreaded worm This is the most heinous of onion ring crimes It occurs when the onions aren’t cooked thoroughly, so that rather than breaking off cleanly with each bite, you’re left with a long worm of onion in your mouth and the hollow shell left behind in your hand Dealing with the batter problems is a snap—we’ve already got an awesome recipe for light, crisp, lacy, justthick-enough batter for our fried cod But what about splitting and worming? Splitting was a tough case to crack What could cause the batter shell to break open like that? To figure it out, I carefully dissected an afflicted ring with a set of tweezers and discovered that it’s not the batter that’s the problem, it’s the onion Every layer inside an onion is separated from the next by a thin, papery membrane—you can quite easily see it if you rub the inside of a raw onion ...• The dreaded worm This is the most heinous of onion ring crimes It occurs when the onions aren’t cooked thoroughly, so that rather than breaking off cleanly with... What could cause the batter shell to break open like that? To figure it out, I carefully dissected an afflicted ring with a set of tweezers and discovered that it’s not the batter that’s the problem, it’s the. .. with each bite, you’re left with a long worm of onion in your mouth and the hollow shell left behind in your hand Dealing with the batter problems is a snap—we’ve already got an awesome recipe for