Deviled Onions
Inspired by deviled eggs, these deviled onions are battered and fried onion cups with a caramelized onion cream cheese filling! This is a tasty and over the top appetizer that is packed with tons of flavor! The crispy onion rings go so good with the caramelized onion and cream cheese filling – it’s like serving the dip right inside the onion ring!
The inspiration for this recipe
I have been trying to “devil” as many different foods as I can and onions were next on my list. So far I have done tater tots, pickles, and chicken nuggets. I really thought a while about how I would do a deviled onion and came up with the idea of frying it and stuffing it with a caramelized onion filling. There is a super old school deviled onion recipe for onions filled with a spicy tomato sauce and baked, but I wanted these to mimic deviled eggs and be a grab and go appetizer.
Prep the onions
This is the hardest step of this recipe. You have to make perfect little onion cups. Cut the top and bottom off the onion, then cut it in half. You can get two cups from each onion. If you want though, you can get 4 from each, if you aren’t as worried about them all being the same exact size like I was. Find the right sized ring, and remove the outer layers, then pop out the middle ones. I liked about 3 inches for the opening of the onion so you could add plenty of deviled filling to it.
I froze the onion “cups” because it makes them softer and it’s easier to remove the membranes. You can see in this photo though, me peeling the membrane before freezing. That one came off easy! After you get your onion cups into the freezer, chop all the other layers that weren’t the right size.
Caramelize the onions for the filling
Add some butter to a pan and cook the onions for about 45 minutes to an hour to get that deep golden brown. Add some garlic at the end and cook it another couple minutes.
Make the deviled onion filling
I used my caramelized onion dip as a blueprint for making this filling, but also added some of my favorite deviled egg ingredients. Cream cheese, sour cream, mayo, mustard, hot sauce, chives, pickled onions and more! Full recipe below of course.
Fry the onions
I like to use the Serious Eats onion ring recipe as a guide when I make them. The vodka makes them extra crispy!
Dip the onions in the batter and fry for about 3 minutes to golden! You might have to hold them under the oil for a little. Place them on a rack with the large open side down and season with salt. Hold in the oven at 200 while you continue to make the rest.
Fill the deviled onions
Pipe the deviled filling into the onions and top with chili flakes and scallions or chives.
Serve the deviled onions
Make sure you dig into these deviled onions asap! Onion rings in general degrade fairly quickly and when you add the filling it accelerates the process.
These are so good it’s crazy. I had to stop myself from eating too many!
Tips and twists on this recipe
You definitely could save yourself some effort and just make these as onion rings with a dip instead of deviled onions. If you did that I would make sure to leave out the potato flakes from the filling recipe, and maybe adjust the base ratio to have less cream cheese and more mayo and sour cream. That will help it be softer and more dip like.
Deviled Onions
Equipment
Ingredients
Filling
- 6 yellow onions
- 2 tablespoons butter
- salt and pepper
- 3 cloves garlic minced or sliced super thin
- 4 ounces cream cheese
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 1/2 cup mayo
- 2 tablespoons mustard
- 1 lemon juice of
- 1/4 cup chopped parsley
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire
- 2 tablespoons chopped chives or scallions
- 1 teaspoon hot sauce
- 1/2 teaspoon gochugaru or other chili flakes
- 1/2 teaspoon celery salt
- 1/4 cup pickled onions
- 1 tablespoon potato flakes to thicken
Frying
- Peanut oil for frying (or preferred frying oil)
- 1 cup flour
- 1/2 cup cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup light beer
- 1/4 cup vodka
Serving
- chopped chive or scallion
- gochugaru or other chili flake
Instructions
Prepping the onions
- Cut the very top and bottom off the onions. Next cut them in half so the top is on one half, and the bottom is on the other. Remove the skin and any bad outer layers.
- Decide which layer will be your onion bowl. I took about 2 more layers off and used the next one. You want it to be about 2.5 or 3 inches in diameter. Once you have decided, take the outer layers off, then use your finger at the base and pop out the middle layers so you are left with your perfect onion bowl. Repeat on the tops and bottoms of all 6 onions to end up with 12 bowls.
- Put the onion bowls into the freezer.
- Chop all the remaining inner and outer layers of the onions into a medium dice.
Make the filling
- Add the butter to a large frying pan over medium heat and dump in all the chopped onions. Cook and stir about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
- Continue to cook about 45 more minutes, stirring occasionally, to deeply brown and reduce the onions. Adjust the heat as needed to not burn them but make sure they get brown and not just reduced.
- Add the garlic to the pan with the onions and cook another 3 minutes, stirring often.
- Add the onion mix to a food processor and add all the remaining onion dip ingredients. Process and pulse until fully mixed and combined. It should be fairly smooth, but clear that there are different ingredients and small bits in the mix – not combined into a single smooth color.
- Store in the fridge until ready to use.
Fry the onions
- Take the onions from the freezer and rinse in warm water to thaw. Carefully remove the thin onion membrane from the inside of each onion. See photos above if needed.
- Preheat oil to 350, preheat oven to 200
- Add the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, powder, and salt to a bowl and stir.
- Stir in the vodka and beer until combined.
- In batches of 2 or 3 depending on how much space you have in the fryer, dip the onion into the batter, then drop into the hot oil. Cook about 2 minutes until golden, flipping and holding under the oil if needed.
- Remove from the oil and place on a cooling rack, larger bowl side down. Immediately sprinkle with salt. Place into the oven to keep warm, and repeat until you do all the onions.
Serve
- Put the filling into a piping bag.
- Remove the onions from the oven and place bowl side up on a serving platter.
- Pipe the filling into the onion rings. Top with gochugaru and scallion or chive. Serve.
You mention
“ Continue to cook about 45 more minutes”
Just checking if this was meant to be 4-5 more minutes .
No, it is indeed 45 minutes! The onions need that long to get truly caramelized and brown. You could do less, and achive a simmilar flavor in 20 or 30 more minutes but to get them as deeply browned as seen in the photo you will need the full time.
Thank you for being honest in a recipe about how long it takes to caramelize onions lol! So few recipes are realistic about this.