Air Fryer Onions

Ninja air fryer onions are the bomb! To top on hamburgers, caramelized, serve as a side dish or add meat and make fajitas for dinner. Perfectly tender with a wallop of flavor. If you loved making air fryer frozen onion rings this is a game changer too.

Ready for some of the most amazing air fryer onions around? Here they are!! The great burger topping with a wallop of flavor. One of our favorite easy air fryer recipes here on The Typical Mom blog.

Air Fry Onion

I mean this is probably the cheapest recipe ever, and adds the most flavor at the same time. Use any type you want from yellow to white or even red. They are the best burger topping ever you can actually make sweeter similar to how to caramelize onions.

I mean what don’t I use these babies for? Always in my fridge to dice or slice and give every recipe not only added flavor but texture too. Air fry longer for more tender and char or just a bit to soften slightly, up to you. Give them a whirl and let us know what you think.

Helpful Tips

Note that when you slice the onion they need to all be the same width (or as close to it as possible). The thinner they are the softer and browner they will get in a shorter amount of time. Thicker seems better in our opinion as they do shrink a bit.

You can see here how large we made them. Then you’ll want to pick each large piece up and separate them so each piece can get coated with olive oil and seasonings. Throw these into a bowl and get the rest of your items out. Preheating your air fryer is always a good idea to make them golden brown at the end. 5 minutes will do the trick.

What Types of Onions to Use?

Yellow is the most common, they are often referred to as all-purpose onions. You can bake, smoke, saute, or dice them up and add them to things like meatloaf. I choose those most often myself to make these fried onions the healthy way.

When you air fry onions I highly suggest that you use 2 medium to large sizes and slice evenly, thin is our preference. Of course there is a wide variety of sizes when it comes to these so the amount of olive oil will vary. Just make sure they all glisten meaning they’re coated and you’ve added enough.

Variations

If you have 2 rather large sizes you may need to add more than advised below in my recipe card. And there are a bunch of varieties and colors out there, red onions will take a bit longer since they are firmer in nature so when cooking onions of this variety you’d need to increase the timing to about 20 minutes still flipping often.

Air Fryer Yellow Onions

Yellow or white onions will follow the same cook time displayed below, there is no difference in that. To clarify what I mean by them glistening in the bowl, you can see what I mean here ensuring every piece is coated with oil. This coating also helps the seasonings to stick well, and to soften nicely. They’ll brown a bit on the ends and the longer you cook them the browner they’ll get.

A 15 minutes cooking time was perfection when we were making thinly sliced onions that were sauteed onions for our Instant Pot hamburgers though. These are not coated with anything like a blooming onion or onion rings are. They are naked essentially and meant to be a side dish or topping.

If you want to make the crispy onions, like the crunchy kind, follow our crispy fried onions recipe. Those are lightly battered so you will get more of an onion ring texture of sorts.

Serving Suggestions

Once you have your onion with oil on top add whatever seasons you like. Garlic powder is a great add in too. I’ve used Old Bay at times because it’s my go to choice and that’s yummy. This is what we used this time when it was a real hit:

For a quick hamburger topping this is great to throw together. You can make a huge batch if you have a lot of people over in no time. Keep drawer closed so they stay warm until ready to serve.

What would you use air fryer onion for or with? Our favorite is atop burgers but or when making air fryer fajitas. There are so many other ideas out there though.