Air Fryer Onion Pakora (Vegan, Gluten-Free)

There is a specific weather that pakora belongs to. Across South Asia, the first heavy rain of the monsoon sends people to the kitchen for besan, onions, and hot oil — pakora and chai is the established response to a gray afternoon, the way soup is elsewhere. The batter is chickpea flour, spiced and loosened just enough to coat sliced vegetables, and onion is the version most fought over: sweet, jammy strands inside a craggy, nut-flavored crust.

Here's where honesty matters. A pakora is, at its heart, a deep-fried thing — those wild, lacy, crunchy edges come from loose batter hitting hot oil. The air fryer cannot fully reproduce that chaos, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What it can do, with a batter kept thick and clusters kept craggy, is give you a genuinely crisp, golden fritter on a couple of spoons of oil instead of a panful — close enough that you'll happily make it on a Tuesday rather than waiting for an occasion.

The besan does double duty: it's the binder and it's why this is naturally gluten-free, with no major allergens in sight. That makes it an easy snack to hand around, and tossing the onions in the spiced batter is a properly fun job for a kid.

Keep the clusters loose and spread out in a roomy basket — packed pakora steam into a dense cake instead of crisping at the edges.