Sauce: Crispy Baked Onion Petals with Fry

Crispy baked onion petals dipped in a truly straightforward and savory fry sauce. Whether it’s an appetizer or snack or side, you’ll love them!

My friends, do I have an appetizer, a.k.a snack or side for you.

Heaven is crispy, spicy, Panko crusted onion petals and a bangin’ fry sauce. I’m not even kidding. All of it is truly simple and did I mention it’s baked? Baked because I’m a chicken when it comes to deep-frying. Oh-yeah annnd it’s healthier, but genuinely it’s because I’m deathly afraid of bubbling hot oil.

This is one of those recipes I kinda only thought of while vacuuming one morning. I wanted something to go along with these kick-butt burgers I was about to make that evening {and ones I’ll be sharing here real-real soon}. I thought about onion rings but I didn’t want to have to bust out the mandolin and risk an injury to my precious lady fingers {those things scare me too}. So since I was feeling all lazy-like I took the bones of my baked onion rings recipe and applied them to onion petals, but this time I made them a smidgen spicy and I also made kick-butt fry sauce that is truly two ingredients and ridiculously savory.

Who doesn’t love the sound of that?

Don’t worry about that big basket of onions, you do not need that many unless you’re feeding an army. One large sweet onion will do only fine.

Preheat your oven to 400°.

Meanwhile; trim, peel, halve and slice your onion vertically to make the onion petals.

I took the center part of the onion out and discarded it. It’s too thick and doesn’t make for good petal making.

Next, separate the layers of the onions and place them into a bowl.

Then season the cup of flour with cayenne pepper, all purpose season salt, garlic powder and black pepper.

Next add the same exact spices to the Panko breadcrumbs. This insures the petals to be perfectly seasoned and well-seasoned.

Then whisk 4 egg whites until frothy.

Next add a few of the onion petals at a time, into the seasoned flour and tossed to coat.

Tap off the excess flour.

And then dip them into the egg whites. This part is important. If there’s a dry spot on the onions the crumbs will not stick.

Allow the extra egg whites to drip off the onion and back into the bowl.

And then coat them in the seasoned breadcrumbs.

Next, line them up onto a parchment or silicon mat lined sheet pan, fit as many onto the sheet pan as possible as you can clearly see I did and then bake in a preheated 400° oven for 18-20 minutes.

Meanwhile whip up the fry sauce. Fry sauce is simply mayonnaise and ketchup. But when those two things unite a crazy-savory sauce is born. It sort of reminds me of big mac sauce mince the relish.

Be my guest and go all out here and make kitchen-made mayo and ketchup. You could even make this sauce smoky and spicy by mincing up a chipotle pepper and add it in.

Finally stir until smooth and pop it into the fridge until you’re ready to serve.

Once the onion petals are golden and crispy remove them from the oven and serve immediately.

Finally, The proper way to eat an onion petal is this:

Pick a petal…

then dip…

…and devour.

I’m mean, look how pretty! These baked onion petals almost too pretty to eat.

Almost.

Enjoy! And if you give this Baked Onion Petals recipe a try, let me know! Snap a photo and tag me on twitter or instagram!