Air Fryer Garlic and Onion Pretzels

Crunchy, golden-brown pretzels, infused with the irresistible flavors of garlic and onion. These savory treats are the perfect snack to satisfy your cravings, whether you’re watching a game, relaxing on the couch, or packing a lunch.

The best part? They’re incredibly easy to make, requiring minimal effort and ingredients. Simply pop them in the air fryer or bake them in the oven, and in no time, you’ll have a batch of homemade pretzels that are far superior to store-bought.

You really can’t go wrong trying out this delicious snack!

Tips & Tricks

Please read these tips & tricks so you don’t repeat the mistakes we’ve made along the way getting the perfect coating and the perfect crunch. Plus you don’t want to over cook them at all and it happens fast.

• Follow each set of instructions for your chosen cooking method one by one to avoid any problems.
• Using butter rather than oil adds more flavor, however oil can be used instead of butter.
• Stick to the exact quantity of ingredients to be sure you don’t have any problems getting the desired outcome.
• If you choose air fryer method, please know that all air fryer makes and models operate differently and can require more or less cooking time. Keep a careful eye.

How to Make the BEST Garlic and Onion Pretzels

• Ingredients you need for garlic and onion pretzels: mini twist pretzels, garlic powder, onion powder and butter.
• Kitchen tools that you’ll need are: large zip top bag. This is our preferred method and after trying many other methods including stirring it in, in a large bowl, we found this to be not only the easiest but it ensures the best coating for the pretzels. (in the bowls, all the ingredients seem to drop down into the bottom of the bowl and are hard to move around after that.)
• Instead of pretzel twists you can opt for pretzel sticks, pretzel crisps, pretzel snaps or any pretzel shapes. If it’s a hard pretzel, it should work just fine.
• These seasoned pretzels will store well in an airtight container for up to 5 days. If they last that long, because ours never do.

Best Cooking Method for Garlic and Onion Pretzels

There are a lot of options for how to cook these pretzels. We’ve tried them all, and we have a favorite, but I’m still going to tell you how to do it all three ways so you can decide what is best for you.

Prepping

Method one: You need one large bowl. In the bowl, you will need to combine all of your ingredients and stir gently to coat evenly. Don’t stir too much or all your toppings will fall to the bottom. If it does fall to the bottom too much, I recommend using a spatula to scrape it up and try to get it back onto the pretzels again. I do not actually prefer this method because it’s too easy for the toppings to fall to the bottom.

Method two: You will need one Zip Top Bag – gallon size is the best. This is our preferred method because of the ease of coating all of the pretzels at once. In a zip top bag pour in the pretzels, then the butter and shake well. Do NOT expel the air. Once the pretzels are sufficiently coated in butter, add in the seasonings. Repeating the shaking. This time you may be shaking a bit more. Again, do NOT expel the air. It makes for more even coating when the pretzels have a lot of room to move around.

Now you’re done with the prep, so move on to the cooking methods:

Cooking

Method one – The Air Fryer: This is the method we prefer. We felt like we had more control over how they cooked and we were able to get them sufficiently cooked on all sides. It is also a bit tricky and does require just a tad more effort. I promise the results were worth it.

Layer your pretzels in the bottom of your air fryer basket, do not do them all at once but in batches – we did about 2 cups at a time but our air fryers have large baskets, so you decide for what you have. Minimal overlap is ok.

Air fry 350 degrees for about 3-5 minutes, shake the basket halfway. Our air fryer had them done in the third minute. Due to the difference in air fryers, you might require more time and more shaking. Repeat until all pretzels are done. If your air fryer has a preheat cycle, do not put pretzels in basket until preheat is complete.

Method two – The Oven: This one is probably the easiest, but the timing never seemed to be correct and we felt like we had to turn our pan a lot to make sure all sides were cooking. Which is odd since our oven doesn’t seem to have hot spots with anything else.

Layer your coated pretzels on a large baking sheet. Bake at 300 degrees for about 10-15 minutes. Check often and add more time if needed. You can and probably should flip them over about halfway.

Method three – The Microwave: We did not like this method or the results at all. But many recipes swear by this method, so we are giving it to you in case you want to do it this way.

Leave the pretzels in a large microwave safe bowl – if you start with a large bowl for stirring you can just use that bowl, provided it is microwave safe.

Microwave on high for 1 minute. Remove and stir pretzels gently to more evenly coat. Repeat for another minute. Repeat the stir. And microwave one last time and repeat the stir. Three minutes total. If they need one more, go ahead, but I haven’t found that to be the case. Spread the pretzels out on a piece of parchment paper or a baking sheet and allow to cool. I will admit this is a pretty easy method that just requires you to be available to stir.

While there may be other method’s to make the pretzels, these were the methods we had the most typical expected results with.

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