Lorde Is Lord of the Onion Rings
Pinghung Chen / EyeEm
In case you hadn’t heard, Lorde is royally into onion rings.
Her predilection for the aromatic fried delicacy all came out in mid June, when someone tipped off the New Zealand news site Newshub that the onion ring fan behind the Instagram account @onionringsworldwide — the bio reads, “Every onion ring I encounter, rated” — had a lot in common with the international pop star.
After parsing everything from the account’s followers and locations to the language used in the captions and the fingernails of the person holding the onion rings in the photos, the news site concluded, “we’re not saying it’s Lorde’s, but it’s probably Lorde’s” Instagram account.
Adding to the mystery, Lorde’s management company declined to confirm, deny or comment in any way in response to Newshub’s inquiry — and the Instagram account was quickly taken down.
But that wasn’t the end of the story. Not long after speculation peaked, Lorde appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and reluctantly confirmed that, in fact, the account had been hers.
“I sort of naively didn’t realize it would be, like, a thing that I was going to different places and trying the onion rings at each of those places,” Lorde told Fallon, by way of explanation, adding that she had started it only as “a funny thing with my friends on the tour.”
Once people began linking the account to her, though, Lorde took it down, fearing that “people are going to be throwing onion rings at me on tour and it’s going to turn into a whole thing.”
Still, even though the Instagram account is no more, Lorde said, she is still going to keep up with her onion ring habit. “I think they’re underrated. I don’t think they get enough credit for how delicious they are,” she told Fallon.
She also said she had learned “a few secrets” about the fried side dish from her “semiprofessional adventures.”
“I think that a batter works better than a crumb … it’s a bit lighter and the other thing you can do to really make an onion ring magical is lightly pickle the onion before you batter it up,” she said. “It takes on this acidity and it’s incredible.”
Let the Lorde of the onion rings jokes rain down.
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Photo: Getty Images, Pinghung Chen / EyeEm
