I wanted to make an original pizza for the pizza contest. This onion ring pizza includes freshly fried up onion rings, mozzarella cheese, and a zesty ranch base (inspired by the "zesty" sauce that you get with onion rings/bloomin' onions at some places).

Step 1: Gather Your Ingredients

Ingredients:
- Pan Spray
- Corn Meal
- 1 ball of pizza dough (or 1 pizza worth of a recipe, I'm using a premade ball)
- Ranch Dressing
- Hot Sauce
- Shredded Mozzarella
- An Onion, some oil, onion ring batter mix, and water (or premade onion rings)

Supplies:
- Pizza pan (or stone)
- Cutting board and knife
- Measuring cup
- Pizza Cutter
- Spoon
- Frying Pan
- a couple of small bowls for mixing

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit

Step 2: Make the Onion Rings

If you don't want to fry them, you could probably heat them in the oven. Alternatively, you could probably buy some frozen onion rings and heat them according to the package.

1. Slice the ends off the onion and peel it
2. Slice the onion into rings. Try to make them consistent widths.
3. Pop the slices apart and choose the nicer looking rings for your pizza. I discarded any that were broken (cut through when I peeled it) and most of the center ones. But I did keep some of the little ones for variety.
4. Put the oil in the pan and heat it up on high. It should be maybe around 1/4" deep so that at least 1/2 of an onion ring will be submerged when laying in it (you'll flip them).

Note some oils have a lower smoke point than others -I used extra virgin olive oil and it got pretty smoky. I found this link: http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/collectedinfo/oilsmokepoints.htm that describes smoke points of oils. For the most parts, more refined oils will probably keep from smoking. Shortening or butter is probably a better choice than EVOO.

5. Mix up your batter according to the directions on the box.
6. Dunk all of your onion slices in the batter to coat them and put them on something that you can drag over to the stove
7. Put a paper towel on a plate for your finished rings.
8. Fry up the onion rings until they're golden brown. My batter said to flip immediately after putting it in the oil and that worked pretty well. I did 4-5 at a time.
8. After frying, place the onion rings on the paper-towel-lined plate and set aside as you prep the rest of the pizza.

Step 3: Put the Pizza Together

1. Spray the pan and sprinkle lightly with cornmeal. This will keep the pizza from sticking.
2. Stretch out the dough and plop it in the pan. Spread it out to the edges and poke holes with a fork or your fingernails.
3. Mix ranch with hot sauce in a bowl. I used about 1/4 cup ranch and maybe 20 squirts of hot sauce. You can tweak this to the desired zestiness. My boyfriend said that this should've been spicier and I didn't use enough sauce :\
4. Spoon on the ranch. Spread it out to the sides.
5. Sprinkle on mozzarella. I use about 1 cup, you want to be able to see a bit of sauce through the cheese.
6. Add onion rings. Spread them out evenly through the pizza

Step 4: Bake the Pizza

Bake the pizza at 450 for about 20 minutes. I always spin my pizza around halfway so that it cooks more evenly - my oven is pretty uneven.

When the cheese has browned a bit and the crust is a nice golden brown, take the pizza out, cut it up, and eat it!

This actually turned out pretty good. I didn't eat any as leftovers but I was told that it wasn't good microwaved because of the onion rings. It might be better if you warmed it back up in the oven or toaster oven.