That's Using The Old Onion

What's not easy is convincing the general public that FFOs are not only to be eaten around holidays. "Over the last five years, I've put FFOs in meatloaf, in hamburgers, on hamburgers, in soup, on soup, in salad. . . . It has to be easy, it has to be tasty, it has to mimic a behavior everyone is familiar with.

"Nothing really stuck until the chicken last year."

The chicken.

The chicken, everyone is very proud of. A picture of the chicken even graces the cover of the cheddar FFO can.

What the chicken is, is a chicken breast, dipped in egg and rolled in crushed FFOs.

"It's like bread crumbs," says Stacey Bender, who does PR for French's. "It's better than bread crumbs but it's like bread crumbs."

"Last Thanksgiving I made them as an appetizer," Yaros says. "Like a chicken finger appetizer." Kids love it. Kids ask for it. That's what an FFO will do, she says. Make a kid eat his protein and vegetables.

To ask why we eat FFOs is an attempt to get at the root of Thanksgiving gluttony itself. There is no reason except that we are Americans and it is our God-given right.

So these are the ingredients that make the FFOs that produce the casseroles that were invented in 1955 that feed Americans on Thanksgiving Day:

Flour, water, salt and an annual allotment of 8 million pounds of palm oil and 17 million pounds of yellow onions from Upstate New York. The onions are hand-selected for the perfect level of beige-y-ness; digital color samples guide onion selectors away from those that are too green. They are sliced thin, coated in batter and placed on a 125-foot-long conveyor-belt fryer that's filled with palm oil heated to 400 degrees. When they come out of the fryer, they are dried for three hours, salted and then chemically analyzed to make sure they haven't been salted too much.

"The drying process is very important," says Nick Palamidis, a research associate.

What temperature are the onions dried at?

He looks nervous. He pushes his anti-splatter goggles up on his nose. "It's proprietary," he says. He looks for help from the marketing reps. Is there a more polite way to say that? he wants to know.

The rest of the French's crew jumps in.

No, it's proprietary, whaddaya gonna do?

Like Coke, does Coke give away their recipe?

This is not an easy product to make!

Trade secrets, trade secrets.

"We have gone from a metal pull-top to a foil top," Yaros says. "We're not going to rest on our laurels."

It's all about the process and consistency. It's all about opening a can of onions that tastes like every other can of onions you've ever opened. It's all about not fiddling with the product. It's all about showcasing the legacy attributes.

So savory.

So crunchy.

They're like a little texture surprise.

The thing to remember about French Fried Onions and the holidays is this, Yaros says: "When you put FFOs in the mix, it's a different experience. I mean you can make a lot of variations on this casserole. Cream of celery soup instead of mushroom, broccoli instead of green beans. But you cannot take away the onions."