How To Cook Light & Crispy Air Fryer Onion Rings

We love onion rings! Unfortunately I’ve had less than stellar results cooking them at home. They typically come out of the oven soggy on one side and sorta, kinda crispy on the other. When onion rings are done right they are phenomenal, but when they are done poorly, they kinda suck.

Shortly after my husband I were married we moved into a new apartment. After unpacking all day and getting settled in my husband asked what we were going to do for dinner. BLTs and onion rings I exclaimed.

I left the last of the unpacking to him and got started on dinner. As I was frying up the bacon I spread out frozen onion rings onto a cookie sheet to slide into the oven. My husband wandered into the kitchen and asked if there was a better way to cook the onion rings instead of baking them in the oven.

I though about it for a second and told him I could deep fry them instead. So I got out a saucepan, poured in a couple inches of vegetable oil and turned the heat to high. My thought was when they fry up fries at McDonalds the oil is bubbling hot.

I finished cooking up the bacon, toasted the bread, sliced the tomatoes, mayo on the bread, lettuce, tomato and bacon. Sandwiches were all ready to go, but the oil still wasn’t boiling. Surely after 20 minutes on high heat the oil had to be hot enough, right?

So I tossed a handful of onions rings. POOF the entire kitchen filled up with thick black smoke! It rolled out into the family room and started drifting up the stairs! There was black smoke EVERYWHERE!!! My husband had the quick sense to grab the saucepan and take it outside. The black smoke continued to billow out of the pan in large wafts of thick black smoke.

Our new neighbor noticed the smoke and came running our of her apartment with alarm asking my husband if there was a fire. Should she call 911?

My husband replied as calm as could be, “Oh that’s not necessary, my wife is just cooking my dinner.” LOL!!! I never could look our neighbor in the eye after that, luckily we only lived there for about a year. She would probably be amazed that the terrible cook next door grew up to be a food blogger.

So if you think you can’t cook, think again. If you don’t give up, and keep trying, you will get better and you too will be able to cook up some really tasty food! Practice makes perfect, and the best lessons we learn are from making mistakes.

I never did perfect cooking up onion rings until I got an air fryer. I was pleasantly surprised at how crispy and good they turn out when you air fry them!

Start by preheating your air fryer to 400°F.

Place frozen onion rings in the air fryer basket and spread them out evenly in a single layer. Do not crowd them in the basket. Cook in several batches if necessary. 

Cook onion rings for 8 minutes.

Remove the basket from air fryer and flip over each onion ring using tongs or shaking the basket.

Return the basket of onion rings to the air fryer and cook for an additional 5-8 minutes or until they are golden crispy brown.

Remove them from air fryer, season with salt and serve them piping hot.

When onion rings are cooked up right they are perfection and cooking them up in the air fryer produces the crispy, crunchy perfect onion rings we all crave but rarely get.

Did You Make This?

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