Pakoras in Air Fryer: Crispy and Healthy!

Name: Pakoras in air fryer
Prep time: 2 min
Cook time: 12 min
Total time: 14 min
Ingredients: ½ cup Besan (chickpea flour); 3 tbsp rice flour; ½ medium Red onion (Chopped or thinly sliced); ¼ tsp baking powder; 2 tsp vegetable oil; 3/4 tsp salt; ¼ tsp chili powder; ¼ tsp turmeric powder; ½ tsp ground cumin; 1 tbsp amchur (dry mango powder); 1/4 tsp crushed black pepper; Cooking oil spray

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Making pakoras in an air fryer is a very convenient way to make these Indian spiced Fritters. These crispy, healthy, and delicious chickpea fritters can be stuffed with the vegetable of your choice. These quick and simple air fryer pakoras make a perfect teatime snack or can even be served as a side dish.

For my non-Indian readers, Pakora is a crispy, spiced, deep-fried fritter made using chickpea flour (gram flour) and vegetables. These Indian fritters are made by deep-frying the chickpea flour batter-coated vegetables like potato, paneer, onions, chili, eggplant, spinach, cauliflower, etc. They are also called bhaji, bora, and bhajiya in many parts of India. I personally love onion pakoda.

Why will you love this recipe?

This is way healthier than the deep-fried pakoras. Very little oil is used in making this recipe. You can make it even healthier by skipping adding oil to the batter. Stick to cooking oil spray only.
This is a vegan air fryer pakora. So, all my vegan friends must give them a try.
Pakoras are a great gluten-free snack that can be made healthier in an air fryer.
Easy and convenient. Making pakora in an air fryer is way easier and more convenient than conventional deep frying.

Air fryer vs deep fryer pakoras

Deep fried pakoras not just take too much oil, but also take a lot of your active time. Whereas this air fryer pakora recipe offers hands-off cooking.
It needs a certain level of skill to deep fry pakoras. A beginner is certainly not comfortable dropping batter with his hands in the extremely hot oil. The safety concerns are always there. On the contrary, when making pakoras in an air fryer, there are no hazards involved.
Making pakoda in an air fryer is a healthy and convenient way to make them.
Without a doubt, the deep-fried pakoras are more crispy and certainly more delicious than the air fryer pakoda. But the above-mentioned advantages make the air fryer a better and healthy choice to make them.

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Why will you love this recipe?
🥘Ingredients for making air fryer pakora
🍶Equipment
🔪Instructions to make pakoras in air fryer
🫙Storage Tips
♨️Reheating Instructions
💭Pro Tips and Substitution Notes
❓Frequently Asked Questions
🍽 Related Air Fryer recipes:
📝 Recipe
Pakoras in air fryer
Nutrition Facts

🥘Ingredients for making air fryer pakora

image showing all the ingredients required fro making air fryer pakoras

Gram flour/ Chickpea flour/ Besan

These all are the same thing. Back home the gram flour is called Besan. And here in the United States, it is sold as chickpea flour. It is also called Garbanzo bean flour. We need the finer version of it. Please do not use coarse or Ladu Besan that we use for making Indian desserts besan laddu, halwa, or Mohanthal, etc.

Rice flour

Rice flour or corn flour enhances the crunch of the pakoras. You can also replace the rice flour with corn flour. It is an optional ingredient; you can simply make pakora with chickpea flour only.

Onions/ vegetables

Red onions are what I have used in this pakora recipe. This kind of makes it an air fryer onion pakora recipe. You can make pakora with literally any vegetable. Be it the mushrooms, eggplants, paneer, spinach, cauliflower, potato, or onions. You can use one or more than one type of vegetable in the pakora batter to make pakoras.

Vegetable oil

Conventionally when we make pakora batter for deep frying, we do not add any oil to the batter. But for the air fryer pakoras, oil is important as it prevents them from becoming dry and brittle.

Choose the vegetable oil of your choice. You can also skip it but trust me adding a little bit of oil to the pakora batter makes a great difference.

Baking powder

Usually, the pakora batter has a runny consistency. Also, it is beaten or whisked to make it airy and light, so that the pakoras are not doughy and dense. But when we make pakoras in air fryer, we cannot have a runny batter. We make a thicker batter that stays in place. Such batter can make dense and doughy pakoras.

Adding a little bit of baking powder makes the pakoras a bit light and helps them to crisp better in an air fryer.

This is something that I have come up with. I have tested it many times and adding one-fourth teaspoon of baking powder makes the air fryer pakoras closer to the deep-fried pakoras.

Just take care not to overdo it, or else the pakoras will crack.

Salt and spices

You can use spices of your choice. But turmeric, cumin powder, amchur (dry mango powder), salt, and pepper are the basic spices that you must add to the pakoras. You can further add heeng (asafetida), chili powder, garam masala, chaat masala, etc. Use whatever you have or like. Make these air fryer pakoras your own.

See the recipe card for quantities.

🍶Equipment

I hate to state the obvious, but for the record. Yes, you need an air fryer for making pakoras in air fryer. You can use oven style or basket air fryer. I have used an 8 qt basket style air fryer for making pakoras.

🔪Instructions to make pakoras in air fryer

Step 1 Prep the veggies

Start by chopping the vegetables that you are going to add to your pakoras. I am only going to chop onions. You can thinly slice the onions or any other vegetables of your choice.

Step 2 Prepare the batter

steps of making batter for pakoras to be cooked in air fryer

Into a bowl add all the ingredients. Start by adding besan and rice flour, followed by all salt and spices. Then add the vegetable oil and combine everything. Let it rest for 3-5 minutes as the onions will melt the salt in the chickpea flour, and release moisture. Then add water to make a thick paste. Do not add too much water. Add 1 tablespoon at a time and mix. Mine took 4 tablespoons of water.

Step 3 Preheat the air fryer

To preheat, set the air fryer temperature to 400 ⁰F and let it run with an empty basket for 5 minutes.

Step 4 Air fry the pakoras

Now spray the air fryer basket with cooking spray. Then, carefully place a spoonful of batter about an inch apart from the pakoras. An 8 qt air fryer basket will be able to adjust all the pakoras in one batch. But if you have a smaller basket, you might want to do two rounds.

After placing the pakoras in the air fryer basket, spray them with cooking spray and close the basket. You want to hurry this step as you do not want to cool the preheated basket.

images showing steps involved in making pakoras in an air fryer

Then, air fries the pakoras at 400 ⁰F for 12-15 minutes or until they become golden brown. The exact time will depend on the size of the pakoras. The small-sized pakoras took 12 minutes to cook completely. Also, do not forget to flip the pakoras halfway through the cooking time.

If your batter somehow turned runny, add more chickpea flour to fix the consistency.

🫙Storage Tips

Store the leftover air fried pakoras in an airtight container or a ziplocked bag and refrigerate for 3-4 days.

For prolonged storage freeze the fully cooled pakoras in a freezer-safe ziplocked bag. They last for months when refrigerated.

♨️Reheating Instructions

To reheat the pakoras, air fry them at 375 ⁰F for 3-5 minutes until they heat up and become crispy. You can also reheat the leftover pakoras in an oven at 400 ⁰F for 8-10 minutes.

Or reheat them in the microwave for a few seconds, but they will not become crispy.

You can also go for the bake mode in the instant pot to reheat the pakoras.

💭Pro Tips and Substitution Notes

Substitute rice flour with corn flour.
Wait out before adding water to the batter. Let the onions release moisture. Then add very little water at a time and mix. Make sure that the batter does not get runny.
If your batter somehow turned runny, add more chickpea flour to fix the consistency.
The exact time will depend on the size of the pakoras. Big pakoras might take longer than small pakoras to cook. It is always better to make small crispy pakoras than to make big pakoras, which will take longer to air dry.
Hurry up the process of making pakoras, or the preheated basket will get cold.
An 8 qt air fryer basket will be able to adjust all the pakoras in one batch. But if you have a smaller basket, you might want to do two rounds.
Adding a little bit of baking powder makes the pakoras a bit light and helps them to crisp better in an air fryer.

❓Frequently Asked Questions

Can you air fry pakoras?

Yes, you can make pakoras in air fryer. Note to make a thick batter and use a cooking oil spray to coat the air frying pakoras.

Why are my air fryer pakoras not crispy?

To make crispy pakoras, choose the right air fryer temperature for pakora. Air fry them at a higher temperature of 400 ⁰F. If you make them at a lower temperature, they will become hard and dry, but not crispy.

How do you reheat pakoras in air fryer?

To reheat the pakoras, air fry them at 375 ⁰F for 3-5 minutes until they heat up and become crispy.

crispy pakoras made in air fryer served with ketchup and chutney

Now that you made these pakoras in your air fryer, you might wanna try making more recipes in your air fryer. A few more snack recipes that you can make in air fryer are:

Some air fryer snack recipes

Side dish Suggestions:

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Till then,

Make it fast and delicious!

📝 Recipe

healthy and crispy looking pakoras made in air fryer served in a plate

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