Bacon Bangles – The Stay At Home Chef

We’ve taken the classic onion ring and leveled it up for the ultimate onion ring. Loaded with sausage and wrapped in bacon, these onion rings are the perfect appetizer! And don’t forget our homemade Maple Cracked Pepper Dipping Sauce—trust me, this makes the dish! Chef Cayt created this appetizer for meat lovers, naming them “Bacon Bangles” after her kids tried to put them on their wrists as little bangle bracelets—they couldn’t keep their hands off them, and neither can we!

For all the bacon lovers out there, try our Bacon Jam, Spicy Maple Candied Bacon, and Bacon Wrapped Water Chestnuts.

This appetizer is such a crowd pleaser! These meaty onion rings are fun to make and even more fun to eat. Perfect for game day, New Year’s Eve, or any fun event, this recipe is sure to impress with its creative twist on a classic. We love this recipe for its dynamic flavors—equal parts savory, smoky, and sweet. The meat lovers in your life will thank you!

Ingredient Notes

• Large Yellow Onions: Make sure your onions are big because you’re stuffing them with the sausage in between two layers of onion, and the outer onion ring needs to be big enough to hold everything together.
• Breakfast Sausage: We chose breakfast sausage to pair perfectly with the sweet and smoky flavors.
• Bacon: Thin-sliced bacon is important because you need to be able to wrap it all the way around the onion ring. A lighter option: sub bacon for Prosciutto.
• Maple Syrup: This will be added to the mayo-based dipping sauce. You can choose any maple syrup from the grocery store or level it up with Chef Cayt’s favorite, Bourbon Maple Syrup.
• Cracked Pepper: You’ll want freshly cracked pepper for the dipping sauce to really bring out the spice and stand out among the mayo and sweet, maple syrup.

Onion Must-Knows

You want the biggest onions you can find for onion rings. Yellow onions are preferrable for this, but a white onion can work too.

To cut the onions, place them on their side and use the tip of your knife to anchor them, just to the side of the center. You’ll be using two rings, one larger and one smaller.

The width of these onion rings should be about 1/2-3/4 inch thick, so cutting just to the side of the center (and then cutting the same distance on the other side) ensures that your onion rings are both thick and big enough to hold a smaller onion inside.

Use the outside ring as the large ring. The smaller ring needs to be about a 1/2 inch smaller, so you have a 1/2 inch gap for the sausage filling.

Wrapping the Bacon

It’s important that you use standard thin-sliced bacon for this recipe so the bacon is able to stretch and cover the surface area of the onion. Fully covering the onion with bacon gives the onion flavor and ensures that it cooks evenly.

Make sure that your bacon is cold, right out of the refrigerator, so the fat hasn’t softened to the point where it’s slippery and hard to work with. Chef Cayt also cuts the ends off of the bacon so that you’re not getting inconsistent, hard texture.

Serving and Presentation

These meaty onion rings are the perfect appetizer but even better in a burger! Instead of adding an onion ring and bacon to your burger, add a Bacon Bangle.

Another fun way to serve these onion rings: stack them on top of each other for a pretty display. You can stack vertically making one big, restaurant-style onion tower, or simply layer them on top of each other on a plate or serving platter.

You can also drizzle our homemade sauce on top, or pair with a few dipping sauce cups.