Onion rings have been a house specialty at BBQ King since the doors opened in 1971, and they're still made the same way: hand battered, fresh, every single day. There's no fryer full of bagged, pre-breaded rings pulled from a freezer here. Someone on the team is slicing onions, dipping them, and hand-battering them, the same basic process that's been running at this restaurant since Steve and Becky Abernethy first opened up.
On an average day, our team hand-breads around 200 pounds of onions, right alongside hand-chopping roughly 25 pork shoulders and hand-pattying about 180 pounds of ground chuck. Picture that for a second: 200 pounds of onions is an enormous amount of hand labor for a side dish at a counter-service restaurant, sliced and battered fresh, not once a week in a big batch, but freshly, every single day the doors are open. That's the kind of number that only makes sense if the food is actually as popular as it is, and if the commitment to doing it by hand has never wavered.
That's a lot of onions for a small counter-service restaurant, but it's the same commitment behind everything else on the menu: nothing frozen, nothing pre-made, just fresh food prepared the same day it's served. It's the same philosophy that has the pit-smoked pork shoulders hand-chopped fresh daily and the burger patties hand-formed from ground chuck rather than shipped in pre-pattied. The onion rings aren't an exception to how BBQ King operates, they're a pretty good example of it.
The onion rings aren't an exception to how BBQ King operates, they're a pretty good example of it.
Order a full order at $5.50 or a half order at $4.00, and pair them with just about anything on the menu. They're a natural side for a BBQ plate, but plenty of regulars order them alongside a burger or a Half and Half instead of fries. One honest caveat: onion rings are a counter item, not a catering one. They're at their best in the first few minutes out of the fryer and they don't hold long, so for a catering spread we'll point you at sides that travel better -- baked beans and mac n cheese hold their own over sterno through a long afternoon, and potato salad is served cold, so it keeps just fine on ice.