We Tried (And Ranked) 6 Fast Food Onion Rings So You Don't Have To

If you ask me, onion rings are always superior to fries. They have more crunch, more flavor, and the dubious claim that you're actually getting some vegetables with your meal (only slightly less dubious than the claim that fries are veggies, but still, it's something). They're not much more expensive than fries at most fast-food enterprises, either, making them a nice upgrade if you like to hit up food on the go.

Are there more reasons to love onion rings, you're wondering? Of course. Not only are onion rings a great way to smuggle cocaine, apparently, but they're also a nice substitute for fries if your region is facing a potato shortage. Moreover, they make a fabulous burger topping. But in this writer's humble opinion, the best way to enjoy them is on their own.

They do have some downsides, though, the main one being that onion rings can either be good... or truly terrible. The best specimens are steaming hot, with structurally sound onions that will burn your mouth if you're not careful, and they have oodles of flavor and crunch. The worst are mealy, more like onion paste that someone has somehow coaxed into a ring shape and then covered with a bland batter. Knowing the good from the bad is always helpful, which is why The Takeout tested six of the most popular fast food onion rings so you don't have to.

Without contest, Burger King had the worst onion rings of the lot. A while ago, Burger King caught my interest by offering both fries and onion rings as a combo, which is something I've long wanted fast-food restaurants (correction: all restaurants) to do. However, my husband and I tried them and found them wanting. I was curious to see if our opinion might change this time around, but it didn't: These onion rings aren't worth the money, hands down.

At an average score of 2.92 out of 5 (please find an explanation of the ranking system in the methodology at the bottom), they were the worst of the lot by a good margin. These are the perpetrators of the ring-shaped onion paste scenario, and it's just as bad as it sounds. There was no bite of real onion, the crisp was lackluster, and the flavor sat somewhere between bland and ew.

One thing we will give Burger King credit for is that a gimmick is always fun, and the seasonal menu featured names inspired by the Addams Family. Gomez's Churro Fries looked awesome, though we didn't have the stomach space to try them, and Morticia's Kooky Chocolate Shake seemed like a fun one, as well. The Wednesday Whopper had a purple bun that looked like food poisoning waiting to happen, so we had no trouble skipping that in favor of Thing's Rings and Other Things. It's unclear what the Other Things were, but hey, the packaging was a hoot.

Because my mother loves herself a root beer float, I have fond memories of A&W as a child. I trust it, you might say, and it betrayed my trust. Hell hath no fury like a woman served subpar onion rings. Granted, these did get a considerably higher score than Burger King at 3.5, but they had the opposite problem: They were way too crunchy. You could have knocked me over with a feather since I didn't think fried foods came in "too crunchy." It was like biting into a hunk of squid that someone had left in the deep-fat frier for a day, and we did not like it. If you look at the picture, you can almost see the leather-like consistency shining through.

That said, they were hot, which is a must, and the flavor wasn't half bad. Plus, the service was good. After you ordered at the drive-thru, you pulled around to the front and waited for an employee to run the food out. They took this seriously, moving with a quickness and delivering the requested receipt. Plus, the A&W was attached to a KFC, something I've never seen before, doubling the options for ordering. The main complaint wasn't with the experience but with the rock-hard product and the onion that, somehow, disappeared in the process. Give these a pass.

Things started creeping in the right direction with Carl's Jr. It still scored a 3.75, which is a solid C for those math types out there, so... not great. The main complaint was the flavor, which everyone felt was lackluster. We were offered sauce, which in the interest of scientific accuracy we declined at all six restaurants so we could really focus on the onion taste; had we been able to accept it, we might have found the onion rings a better vehicle than they were an item in and of themselves.

On the plus side, the onion rings came out nice and hot. They were plenty crunchy and the large contained enough of them to feel very satisfied. Actually, even with shrinkflation, size wasn't a complaint for any of the large onion ring batches we ordered. Moreover, the employees were nice. When we forgot our expense receipt, they reprinted one for us without any trouble. In general, though, I wouldn't waste your time on CJ's when there are better options out there.

First, let me just say that this ranking would have been a lot lower had I not been part of the taste test. My scores were considerably higher than everyone else's, because I quite liked the flavor and crunch of these. Again, I may be influenced by my mother here, who had to wear the Jack costume one summer in high school. I just love that image.

It's a good sign that everyone agreed these rings were hot enough, though the others disliked the taste. For my part, I thought it was the right balance between oniony flavor and fatty breading, and I ate several more than the one to two we'd allotted ourselves at each restaurant (the better to save stomach space). That tells you something. All told, our combined scores earned Jack in the Box a 4.17, which is the first product to make it into the B range, and a solid B at that. If you're in the neighborhood of a Jack in the Box and are craving some onion rings, this isn't the worst place to go.

Almost to the top runner, and we're getting to the really good stuff. Although Sonic's onion rings weren't as good as No. 1, we did enjoy them quite a bit, with an overall score of 4.67 – our first A. In fact, I thought they were as good as bloomin' onions, which is high praise for me because I. Love. Bloomin'. Onions. They are the standard against which I measure all other Fried Onion Things at restaurants, because if they're not better than a blooming onion, then they're not worth having. Sonic cuts the mustard in this department.

There are a few things to note about Sonic that may influence your decision. First, the small boy child got a cold onion ring, which may indicate that they slipped in one onion that hadn't recently been fried. That seems kind of gross. On the plus side, there were nice parking spaces into which you could pull while you ate, and our order came with a mint. It's the little things in life, right? To summarize, you should put Sonic at the top of your onion ring list, only narrowly beaten out by our No. 1 purveyor, good old DQ.

Although other rankings from the Takeout have put onion rings on the list of items to avoid ordering from Dairy Queen, our crew didn't find that to be the case. It's important to note here that Dairy Queen is franchised, meaning that it has many different owners across its restaurants rather than having one corporate overlord. That makes for more variation than you'd find at, say, In-n-Out Burger, where one family owns all locations.

My theory is that this explains why we enjoyed Dairy Queen's onion rings so much, whereas other taste testers weren't impressed. They came out hot to the point that they steamed when you bit into them, had a perfect amount of crunch, and were flavored with some indistinguishable spice that made them taste like they came from a carnival stall: a little bit sweet, a lot bit savory. Indeed, they got a perfect 5 from our crowd, meaning they wowed in all three categories equally. The family consensus was that there's no point getting onion rings anywhere else ever again.

I should note that this is especially impressive because we visited Dairy Queen last. Whereas I was worried about the primacy effect influencing our initial experiences and obscuring the later ones, we had no trouble knowing this was our favorite, despite being full of five other onion ring brands. DQ should honestly get some kind of medal for this.

Because we believe in science, we created a taste test protocol that involved two squirrelly children and zero controls. That's the best way to get unbiased results, right? Or did I misunderstand something in eighth-grade science class?

In all seriousness, while I usually use a blind system in my taste tests, it was impossible to disguise where the onion rings were coming from in this ranking, because we pulled up to each restaurant in turn. The other option would have been to bring them all home at once, but they would have lost their heat, an important factor in weighing how good they are, since almost every consumer will be eating them straight from the restaurant and wants them piping hot. Hot food is important, guys; we're trying to have a society here.

However, our methodology did still use a careful ranking and averaging system. Each person got a scorecard, on which they ranked each onion ring sample for crunchiness, heat, and flavor. I then averaged each person's rankings for that onion ring before averaging everyone's rankings together to get the final score. That score dictated where the onion rings fell in the list above.