This Midwestern Fast Food Chain Has America's Best Onion Rings

Onion rings are a beautiful thing, especially when generously salted and fried to the kind of hot crispiness that leads your taste buds to nirvana — and your mouth and tongue to be burned from greedily shoving the whole thing into your mouth. Onions are flavorful all on their own, but when you turn them into onion rings, this favorite diner and fast food side can give you the kind of satisfaction Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones couldn't find. On the flip side, soggy, freezer burned, or cold onion rings are anything but what we just described. In fact, a bad onion ring can lead to some pretty hard feelings, the kind that make you never want to eat at your favorite fast food restaurant again. 

So, where are you pretty much guaranteed to always get great onion rings and keep your fast food relationships intact? We admittedly love BurgerFi's double wide, double battered onion rings that are so big, they really require a fork and knife to look civilized when eating them. The Texas-based Whataburger definitely serves up some onion rings that make our mouths and tummies happy, too. But only one fast food chain gets to be crowned the best when it comes to onion rings, and they hail from the Midwest.  

Headquartered in America's Dairyland, A.K.A. Wisconsin, Culver's gets the crown for best onion rings. Why Culver's? Well, they say the proof is in the numbers and per Taste of Home, the family-friendly fast food chain served up over nine million orders of their savory, crispy onion rings in 2017. Taste of Home notes their popularity may be linked to their batter, which contains a spice blend that makes these onion rings oh-so good. 

But beyond the numbers are the reviews. Let's face it, people are quick to let you know when they don't like something, but when they post a review that they did like something, that means a lot. One five star Tripadvisor reviewer from Missouri wrote of Culver's onion rings, "The burger was fresh and the onion rings were the best I have had in a long time." Another Tripadvisor reviewer from Arizona writes the onion rings are "truly the very best of any fast food restaurant we've tried." And on Yelp, a reviewer from Colorado proclaimed Culver's onion rings were "some of the best onion rings I've ever had in my life." That said, the best way to know for absolute certain that Culver's onion rings are superior is to go and enjoy an order for yourself.