Transcription
It's a good day to learn how to make a blooming onion. You don't need a vat. You don't need gallons of oil. You just need you, your air fryer, and a few ingredients you likely already have on hand.
[Music]
Hey there, my name is Kathy, and on this channel, I help people actually use their air fryer. Today, I'm going to show you how you can make a healthier, faster, and a much less expensive blooming onion right in your air fryer. You ready to whip this one up? Let's go.
So, we're going to start with a nice large sweet onion. You'll first just want to trim off this top little portion and then peel back that first layer of onion. And try to avoid this if you can, but no big deal if you have that problem like I did.
So now we got our flat part. We're going to lay that down. You don't want to cut through this root. This is going to hold everything together. Start with four slices, go straight through the onion. And then, depending on how wide your onion is, you can get two to three more cuts in between each quarter of the onion. Just want to make sure you're not getting too close to the root, or root, how do you say it? Make sure you get all the little sections cut.
And now here you have your onion ready to blossom. Just separate those out to make sure everything is cut through. And isn't that beautiful? I've got a bowl of ice water here. I'm gonna just soak my onion. I've got it resting upside down. This is gonna help it blossom a little bit better. I'm gonna let it soak while I make up my dredge.
My first station is gonna be adding three-quarters cup of buttermilk, and I'm adding two eggs, and I'm gonna beat those together until it's nice and smooth. Set that aside.
And in another bowl, add about one to one and a half cups of flour. It's gonna just depend on how big your onion is. Then a tablespoon of paprika, a tablespoon of brown sugar for a little sweetness, one teaspoon of salt, then a quarter to a half teaspoon of cayenne pepper. You could go even less if you can't handle the heat. A half teaspoon of pepper, a half teaspoon of dried oregano, a half teaspoon of thyme, a half teaspoon of garlic, and a half teaspoon of cumin. Drop that in your mix, whisk it up.
Then I'm going to take about a quarter cup of this mixture and drop it into my buttermilk mixture and blend that until it's nice and smooth.
Then our last step is going to be getting about a cup of panko crumbs. And to help with the crispiness factor, I'm just going to spray on some oil. I'm using avocado oil today in my new little sprayer that I'm testing out still. I'm just going to mix that oil around in these panko crumbs. That's going to help add that final crispy touch to our blooming onion.
One last thing before we put this onion all together, we're gonna make a foil sling. This will come really handy when we need to pull the cute little blooming onion out of the air fryer. So, I just have a thin strip of heavy-duty foil and I'm making two little handles here. And you can see it's gonna just fit perfectly in my air fryer, and there's still plenty of room for circulation.
Okay, so we have everything ready. We have one more little step before we start the dredging process. I'm taking the onion out of the water and I'm just gonna let it drain here on a paper towel for just a moment. And we're gonna put the flour on the top of the puddle. So, I'm gonna kind of move this over to the side, pull up in my onion, and we're just gonna get those hands dirty. Oh, I forgot. I want gloves, otherwise, totally get flour in my nails here. Okay, got my gloves.
Now, I'm just gonna cover up the onion and really work on getting the flour down in between every little onion petal. Separate those petals. Did I just call them puddles? I don't know. If you're having a hard time getting enough flour on your petals, I'm just lifting it and scooping it right over the top. And now I can just kind of let that shimmy down in between, making sure everybody's coated.
Now we got our milky mixture ready. I'm just gonna pop this guy right in here, putting him face down first. I've got a few casualties here, but it's okay. It'll be wonderful. Just kind of scoop that around. Oh yeah, check that out. Just soak up all that buttermilk into those cracks and crevices in between all the petals there. There we go.
I'm setting in a separate bowl and I'm gonna pour this, ooh, yummy, or this right there all over the onion. I'm just gonna coat this baby. Can you see how there's still flour in there? So I want to just get in between every little petal, make sure everybody's getting nice and wet.
Now, just because I really don't want to get another dish dirty, I'm going to just set this back here in the flour mixture and then I'm going to pour the panko crumbs right over the top of the onion. And I'm using them all and just mix those in, get them in between the petals again. It's okay if it mixes with the flour mixture. Everybody's happy here together. Don't be afraid to move your onion if you just need a little more space to open up those petals. Stick it on a plate and just get everything spread out and smooshed in. It's gonna be so good.
And then lastly, I'm gonna just coat it with some avocado oil. Some people say it's a lot of oil, but we are talking like a tablespoon of oil versus gallons. Okay, so just set it right here on your foil sling because it's going to be so close to the burner, these tips are going to burn. So we'll start the cooking process with a little foil over it. Now, you do need to secure the foil so it doesn't blow up into the fan and burner. Just gonna make sure it's tucked under two of the sides, then we have two open for airflow. That's gonna keep it nice and secure. Pop the near fire and we'll go with 370 for 15 minutes.
Which means I now have time to make up a little dipping sauce. And for our dipping sauce, I'm gonna do about two tablespoons of sour cream, two tablespoons of mayonnaise, about a tablespoon of some creamy horseradish, two teaspoons of ketchup, a half teaspoon of hot sauce or sriracha sauce, a half teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce, a half teaspoon of salt, and lastly, a quarter teaspoon of paprika. You know, I'm just in the eyeballing mood today. And stir that up and then just keep that in the fridge until you are ready to eat your blooming onion.
Time's up. Let's take a peek. It's looking good. Now we have the foil removed. We can see if there's any flour that's maybe needing to cook up a little bit. I'm gonna punch it back to and let's give it about three to five more minutes. We'll see how it goes.
If you need to get inspired with your air fryer, I have an ebook with 60 plus recipes. You can learn more about that at yummyairfryerrecipes.com. Depending on the size of your onion, you might need to cook it a little bit longer, but having it covered with that foil will totally protect the tops from burning. If you like your onions even more tender, you can cook it even longer.
Now it's time for the taste test. Oh, I'm so excited. Okay, I don't think you like onions. Do you want to try some? Yeah, you do. Let me get a good piece for you. Tiny, a tiny piece. Not too tight. A little bit of a sauce. Is that fry sauce? It's kind of like fry sauce, but it has a little horseradish in it. Ready? No, of course, I knew you wouldn't like it. I, however, love it. This also reheats beautifully. Just pop it back in the air fryer, same temp, maybe three to five minutes, and it's so good. A steak would be amazing with this. I've got all the tips you need for a perfect steak right here. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you on the next video. That's spicy.