Easy Crispy Fried Onions

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These onions are crispy and crunchy and work perfectly as a snack, an appetizer, as a garnish for soups, salads, meats, and sandwiches, or even to add some wonderful crunch to your mashed potatoes.
Aside from the wonderful crunch, the onion flavor is present without being overwhelming and sharp so it works well to complement a variety of your dishes.

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❤️ Here’s Why You’re Going to Love This Recipe:

• It takes just ten to fifteen minutes to make from start to finish
• It requires just five ingredients
• There’s no messy batter-dipping
• It’s clean-eating, egg-free, dairy-free
• It’s vegan and vegetarian friendly

Read on to see just how easy it is to make these crispy strings of fried onions or if you’d prefer, skip to the recipe card for a quick 1-minute video.

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To Make These Crispy Fried Onions You’re Going to Need:

• Whole wheat pastry flour: You can also use whole wheat flour or white whole wheat flour.
• Potato starch: You can also use tapioca flour as well. The addition of this starch helps your onions to crisp up nicely.
• Salt: I’m using Himalayan salt or sea salt.
• Onion: You can use any kind you prefer from yellow, to white, to red.
• Oil to fry: I’m using an extra light olive oil but you can also use a peanut oil if you prefer.

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Making These Onions Are as Easy As…

To begin you’ll need to peel the skin off your onion and slice it lengthwise (from the root to the tip) and then thinly slice it into strings.

Then sprinkle the flour, potato starch and half of the salt over the onions.

And toss it all together to evenly distribute and cover each of the strands with the flour.

Let your flour-dusted onions rest.

While your onions take a bit of a nap, heat your oil in a pan on a med-high heat. Do not let your oil reach its smoke point. Add a small piece of onion to test your oil. It should bubble and begin to fry immediately but not burn. If you notice that your test piece is browning too quickly, lower your heat.

Add your onions to the oil, don’t worry about overcrowding your pan. Let it fry for a minute undisturbed before using a pair of tongs to turn them.

Continue to fry your onions, being sure to turn them every 30-60 seconds. If you notice any major clumping, using your tongs to gently shake the clump loose.

Your onions should be crisping up nicely after about 5 minutes. Try rearranging them so that the browned ones are on top and the whiter/paler ones are below so that you can get even browning on all your onion strings.

Once most or all of your onions are browned and have crisped up, remove them from the oil (there will most likely be very little left) and spread your onions onto a plate lined with paper towels to cool. While they’re cooling, evenly sprinkle the rest of your salt over your onions.

And there you have it, a wonderful batch of crispy fried onion strings that are just waiting to be devoured. The good news is that if you cool them and then store them in an airtight container they retain their crunch for up to 2-3 days!

Here Are Some Ideas for How You Can Enjoy These Onions:

• By themselves as a snack or appetizer: they can be dipped in anything from ketchup to Thousand Island Dressing.
• As a topping for tacos (like a pulled pork taco pictured above right).
• As a topping for your burgers.
• As a topping for other sandwiches such as a roast beef or pulled pork slider.
• As a garnish for your soups.
• As an addition to salads such as my Caesar Salad, or Cobb Salad.
• To top dishes like Mujadara (pictured above left).
• As a topping for your Green Bean Casserole.
• As a topping for your Mashed Potatoes (or even this Cauliflower Mash).
• Or for these delicious Salisbury Meatballs.

However you choose to enjoy them, I’ll bet you can’t get enough so maybe consider cooking up a double batch!