{"id":140133,"date":"2026-01-27T19:35:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T19:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/140133\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T19:35:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T19:35:06","slug":"cattlemens-steakhouse-onion-rings-earn-certified-delicious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/140133\/","title":{"rendered":"Cattlemen\u2019s Steakhouse Onion Rings Earn \u201cCertified Delicious\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

People come to the Fort Worth Stockyards to witness its history, Western fashion, and to have a good meal. Some come because Cattlemen\u2019s Steakhouse recently got a facelift<\/a>, others because Taylor Sheridan<\/a>, part-owner of the restaurant and creator of the hit TV series \u201cLandman,\u201d<\/a> has left his mark on the place. And yet, none of that brought the restaurant its latest claim to fame. That honor goes to something smaller, crunchier, and entirely unexpected \u2014 the onion rings, which have earned the rare \u201cCertified Delicious\u201d seal from the National Onion Association.<\/p>\n

Greg Yielding, executive vice president of the NOA, explains why it matters: \u201cToday\u2019s restaurants have many choices when it comes to their menu items. They can buy frozen, canned, or freeze-dried. But when they choose to use fresh ingredients and take the time to make an ordinary side item into a delicious serving of onion rings, they have made the conscious decision to value and serve quality. That\u2019s an effort not every restaurant commits to.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what an effort it is. The kind of onion rings that earn the NOA\u2019s nod are made from scratch, with fresh onions, hand-battered and fried just so, never greasy, never falling apart, with a crisp snap that makes the first bite a quiet revelation. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of like, oh, onion rings, okay, well, all onion rings aren\u2019t the same,\u201d Yielding says. \u00a0\u201cThey\u2019re not. And they\u2019re not the same as using fresh onions and cutting your onions and having your batter done the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The award itself isn\u2019t something a restaurant can buy, apply for, or bribe its way into. It\u2019s the result of careful observation, word of mouth, and a discerning panel of onion aficionados. Yielding recalls how Cattlemen\u2019s came to the NOA\u2019s attention: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t anything to do with \u2018Landman\u2019 or anything. Dawn Elisabeth Olinger just went in there, ordered the onion rings, and said, \u2018These people deserve this.\u2019 That\u2019s really what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NOA, founded in 1913, has members spanning the country \u2014 from Washington to Georgia, New York to Texas \u2014 who keep an eye out for restaurants that go the extra mile with onions. Yielding himself has visited countless kitchens, sampling onion-laden dishes and often finding that many fall short. \u201cBelieve it or not, I\u2019ve been to places and tried stuff, and they would not win,\u201d he says. \u201cNobody can call us and say, \u2018Hey, I want to do this, and you\u2019ll come down and try our onions.\u2019 That doesn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Onion rings might seem like a simple comfort food, but the NOA knows better. The type of onion, the batter, the frying technique \u2014 all of it matters. Short-day sweet onions, Yielding points out, can release too much water, resulting in limp, falling-apart rings. The \u201cstorage onions\u201d from Oregon or Idaho, in contrast, hold their shape and snap. The difference, he says, is everything.<\/p>\n

Olinger summed it up succinctly: \u201cSeriously, the best onion rings I have ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cattlemen\u2019s now joins a small but growing roster of restaurants recognized for turning an ordinary side into something remarkable. And while some awards are flashy or fleeting, this one carries a quiet authority \u2014 bestowed by experts who live and breathe onions, who care deeply about freshness, technique, and respect for the vegetable that sits at the center of so many dishes.<\/p>\n

In Fort Worth, at least, you can now order your steak, sit back, and let the humble onion ring remind you that, sometimes, greatness comes in small, crispy circles. As Yielding says: \u201cIn some places they’ll say, \u2018Oh, well, our onions are frozen, but they’re really good.\u2019 Well, it’s nothing like making your own, and I know I’m being specific on the onion ring deal, but that’s an important factor for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People come to the Fort Worth Stockyards to witness its history, Western fashion, and to have a good…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59103,320,116,118,117,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-140133","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-cattlemen","9":"tag-food-and-drink","10":"tag-fort-worth","11":"tag-fort-worth-headlines","12":"tag-fort-worth-news","13":"tag-top-story"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}