I tried onion rings in the air fryer tonight. I should note, I've never tried to bake or air fry these before. I've deep fried them, but I don't like to deep fry anything inside.
I started with a sliced sweet onion.
Dredged in a mixture of flour, cayenne, garlic powder, and black pepper.
Dipped in egg.
Half got coated in panko and half got a second dip in the seasoned flour.
Unlike coating chicken or pork this way, the panko wouldn't stick to the onion. Even with the egg helping, most of the coating fell off. You can't cook anything batter dipped in an air fryer, so something else might work better. Maybe fresh bread crumbs would stick, but I'm probably not going to experiment with this. It is messy and only a small amount of onion rings will fit in my basket. I might breaded and frozen ones, but deep frying would get superior results.
Into the air fryer, sprayed with olive oil. Cooked at 375, flipping over every 5 minutes. These took 15 and I called it good enough.
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Sauce is inspired by Cane's Chicken, but kicked up. 2:1 ratio mayonnaise and ketchup, a little bit of ghost pepper hot sauce, mustard, splash of white vinegar, mustard, worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, onion powder.
My wife said they were fine, she liked the "zesty" sauce. I won't fuss with them again. A quick search of recipes were a similar process and even people photographing food had a hard time getting this coating to stick. Even when you cheat taking pictures, the results just aren't worth it to me.
2/5 and it was my recipe.