Baked Onion Rings

I like onion rings enough but would not consider myself a super fan by any means. I order them on occasion, most often at a burger joint that offers multiple side options, and have never before contemplated making them at home. Until I came across Damn Delicious‘s recipe for baked onion rings completely by accident one day. The pictures looked so good I immediately put them on the menu for the upcoming week. (After Sis consented, of course.)

Any breaded food item is going to be putzy to make. It involves multiple steps of dipping and dredging, the ingredients get all over the place and you have to keep washing or wiping your fingers off. This particular recipe was appealing to me because it involved baking the onion rings instead of deep frying them.

I’m not opposed to eating deep fried food, but I don’t enjoy cooking it. I don’t have a deep fryer because I don’t eat fried food that often. When you don’t have a deep fryer, it is especially putzy to make fried food. You don’t know what number setting to use on your stovetop for effective deep frying. You need a candy thermometer to figure out the temperature. It’s hard to keep the temperature up once you add food. It’s easy to burn the food item or undercook it and grease-log it. Air-frying or baking traditionally deep fried food is much easier. And obviously way healthier for those who care.

I have a habit of under-seasoning fried food when I make it. To compensate, I added salt to the egg mixture, flour mixture and Panko mixture. I made some homemade ranch dressing for dipping. If you’ve never made homemade ranch dipping sauce or dressing, you simply have to try it. It’s super easy. It also tastes sooooo much better than anything you can buy in the grocery store.

These onion rings turned out a tad too salty. I didn’t mind. I love salt. But Sis picked off some of the breading to decrease the salt. We both agreed the end result was fabulous. The onion rings came out perfectly crispy. And bonus, the onion stayed inside its coating. I hate when you order onion rings at a restaurant, and the onion pulls straight out of the coating. I want onion and coating in every bite. We gobbled them up as our appetizer. Sis said she would definitely have them again.

ingredients.