Forget The Rings, Top Your Burger With Onion Strings Instead

Along with your standard selections like lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and ketchup, offbeat burger toppings are a great addition. (Peanut butter and sriracha, anyone?) Raw and caramelized onions are common burger toppings, and in recent years, hefty onion rings have become a dramatic new way to top a burger. If you're a fan of the flavor of an onion ring-topped burger, but want something a little more sensible, fried, breaded onions are the answer. Onion strings can greatly enhance just about any burger, but they're also a better choice when it comes to structural stability.

While onion ring-topped burgers taste amazing, they can be a little unwieldy to eat. This is especially true if you have lots of other toppings on your burger, which can cause onion rings to slide around. Onion strings are smaller and thinner but still pack in the amazing flavor of onion rings. That means you can pile them atop your burger without concerns about the whole thing falling apart, which is the bane of burger eaters everywhere.

There's a scientific reason why onions make such a delicious burger topping. If you've ever wondered why onions make you cry when chopping them, you have lachrymators to thank. These chemicals have a distinct effect on the nasal passages, which tend to dilute when exposed to them. As a result, you're better equipped to take in all the deep, rich aromas and flavors of the burger and toppings thanks to the effects of the onion.

Battering and frying the onions can enhance the experience even further. As food fries, it soaks up the oil it's being fried in, which boosts the flavor. Frying also creates an unbelievably satisfying texture, which nicely offsets the toothsome ground beef, as well as the gooey melted cheese. Onion strings are especially crispy, which means you get an enjoyable crunch in every single bite of your burger. To that end, it helps to develop a reliable burger-building strategy to ensure the onion strings remain firmly in place.

The correct order of burger ingredients is a bit contested, but there are some established norms. For some people, onion strings go under the top bun (above the lettuce and tomatoes), followed by the cheese, burger patty, condiments, and bottom bun. While that's a perfectly fine configuration for many burgers, adding the onion strings directly to the burger and topping them with cheese ensures that the fried strings remain firmly attached to the burger.

If you're a real rebel, you may also consider adding the onion strings between the patty and the bottom bun. This construction offers maximum stability, as the heft of the patty will keep the onion strings nicely anchored to the burger. It also causes the bottom portion of the bread to soak up all the fried goodness of the onion strings. No matter how you build your favorite burger, you're sure to find onion strings to be a crunchy, flavorful addition.