Baked Onion Rings

1-1/2 cups cornflakes
½ cup Panko bread crumbs
1 egg, beaten
¼ cup flour (pastry flour is best)
½ cup buttermilk, or Kefir
pinch of cayenne
1 sweet onion (like Vidalia)
Cooking spray

Put cornflakes and Panko in food processor and pulse until completely broken down.  Pour a little of the mixture into a shallow, flat bowl.  You don’t want to put all of the mixture in the bowl because it will get too clumpy from the buttermilk mixture.

In a shallow, flat bowl beat egg, flour and buttermilk (I use Kefir because I drink that every day and I don’t have any use for buttermilk).  Add cayenne.

Peel onion and cut into thick slices.  Separate rings and discard the large outer rings and the small inner rings (save for another dish!).  Honestly, the smaller your sweet onion, the better.  Small rings are easier to deal with and coat better.  It's hard to find small sweet onions though! 

Cover a baking sheet with foil and top with a baking/cooling rack.  Spray the rack with cooking spray. 

Dip the rings one or two at a time in the egg mixture.  Using a fork, remove one ring and let the egg buttermilk mixture drip off.  Drop the ring into the bread crumb bowl and, using a separate fork, push the breadcrumb mixture on to the ring.  Also, take the fork and swirl it around the center of the ring and then flip the ring over and do that again.  This is the best technique I have found to get the rings coated without having the coating turn into a huge clump.

Continue with all the rings and add more breadcrumb mixture as needed.   Put the rings on the rack as you’re done coating.  This is time consuming, but worth it!  At this point, I like to put the rings in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Before baking, spray the rings with cooking spray.  Bake in a preheated 450 degree oven for about 15 minutes, or until rings are a nice golden color.  No need to flip them if they're on a rack.

Here is what they look like before cooking:

Really, really good, and no deep frying!

If you want to make more rings, you won't need to increase the wet mixture; just double the cornflake mixture.