The Perfect Churros Recipe

Hey, I'm John Kanell, and today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making some delicious, irresistible churros. So let's get started. First off, in a medium pot, we're gonna add one cup of water. Churros are made with a choux, which is the same dough that you would make eclairs or cream puffs with. The only difference is we're gonna deep fry it, piping it right into some boiling oil. To my one cup of water, I'm adding six tablespoons of butter, that's 85 grams, and one tablespoon of granulated sugar. Half a teaspoon of salt for some contrast. We're gonna put this over heat in a minute, but first, let's weigh the flour. This will come together so quickly, and you don't wanna be scrambling and looking around. You want everything at your fingertips. It's important to be prepared. You'll want one cup or 120 grams of all-purpose flour. Scale is done, so let's grab our flour and our pot and head over to the stove. We're gonna place this over medium-high heat and bring it to a boil. Have a wooden spoon at the ready. You can give it a little bit of a stir. We just want the butter to melt first, and then it'll come to a boil. The moment it comes to a boil, you'll be taking it off heat and stirring in the flour. Now, a churro, or churro. My mom is from Mexico, but she doesn't roll her R's when she says all these words. A churro is so delicious. It's very, very light and moist and airy inside, but it is crisp as can be and golden on the outside. Rolled in some cinnamon sugar, it's just about heaven, and you can also dip it in some ganache. Amazing. This has come to a boil, so let's take it off heat right now. Dump your flour and stir hard. Stir, stir, stir. Right now, I have a lovely paste. It's fully incorporated. Back onto medium-high heat, stirring hard for 30 seconds, okay? Okay, 30 seconds later, careful about what you lean on, and you can see this is pulling away from the pot. It's not sticking, and it's forming this cohesive, really delicious-smelling mass. This smells so much more delicious than it has any right to. It smells kind of like the best buttered cream of wheat you ever had in your life at this point. Okay, grab your stand mixer with the paddle attachment, and we're gonna get to work. Transfer your very hot choux dough right into the bowl of your stand mixer. This is missing a crucial ingredient right now, which is eggs. The eggs are going to give you a luscious, even richer, creamier choux dough. Pop your paddle attachment on, and we're gonna mix this on medium for about two minutes so it can start cooling. It's so hot right now that you run the risk of scrambling your eggs when you add those in, so let's just cool it down just a bit. I'm gonna crack the first egg into a small bowl just so it's ready. No shells means that you should check in between just to make sure. While this mixes, I'm gonna start my oil for deep frying. We need two inches of oil in a large pot, and you could use vegetable oil or peanut oil. It's up to you. Place your pot over medium heat. We want our oil to come to 400 degrees Fahrenheit so it is nice and hot, so have your thermometer popped right in there, but not touching the bottom of your pot. My oil is heating up. My choux dough has cooled down, so let's add our first egg. After your first egg is in, let's just scrape the bowl down. Churros are a Spanish-slash-Portuguese invention that were taken to Mexico. The recipe became popular and was altered, so you have the street food that everyone loves today. There's so many churro carts in Los Angeles. However, many of them sell stale churros. Unacceptable. Crack your next egg. Check for shells. Back to medium. Next egg goes in. One more egg. This egg is fully incorporated, so let's add the next egg in, and we're usually gonna use three eggs, but sometimes you'll have to use a little bit more just to have the right consistency. This egg is incorporated, and I'm gonna scrape the bowl down before I do my check to see if we're at the right space. The egg yolks give this such a lovely color. Back to mixing. And now we can take a look. So we're looking at how it falls from the beater, and it should be slow and steady. This has a slow, steady fall. You can see it likes to hold together. It's all falling off. That's great. Now we can add one teaspoon of vanilla. If you wanted to, you could sub in dark rum instead. A little more mixing. My oil's at 195, so chugging along. All right, we're all done. Now we can transfer our batter into a piping bag fitted with a star tip. The star tip is doing a couple things. One, it creates that signature shape, which can hold all the lovely cinnamon sugar, right? So more surface area for delicious things. But much more importantly, it's changing the way that your churro cooks in the hot oil. If you used a round tip or just snipped the tip off your piping bag, too much batter is constrained within a circle, and it can steam up and explode. No one wants exploding things with hot oil involved. So make sure you're using a star tip. Transfer to your piping bag. And by the way, if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button. There's two new recipes every week, and there's always something delicious on the horizon. If you added too much egg, a good sign of that is everything's just falling out of the piping bag, like, blah. That's the sound in your head, blah, as it's happening. See, like, this is okay, because there's a lot of pressure pushing it down, but it's just gonna be, like, streaming on out there. There we go, there we go. This is how you have to store it while everything is heating up. Just like that, don't fall. Go to sleep. While your oil heats up, make sure you have your cinnamon sugar at the ready. You want about 3 quarters of a cup, that's 150 grams of granulated sugar, right into a bowl or a shallow plate. And two teaspoons of cinnamon. One and two, mix it up. Now this is ready for dredging your churros. If you want, you could transfer this to a rimmed plate, it might make rolling them easier. I've reached temp, so let's start piping. You're gonna pipe and cut lengths. Doesn't matter what, but for consistency's sake, they should all be the same, and six inches is a nice length for dipping. Of course, I'm not gonna have a ruler, so just estimate. The way we're piping these churros, they're gonna have lots of crunchy, golden skin, and the inside will be just cooked through steam. 400, or right above, or a tiny bit below, is just where we want this to be. So adjust the temperature as you add more churros in, because that'll drop the temp, and you'll have to increase and decrease just to maintain the right range. I pulled these out too soon, but I did it because I knew it wasn't working. We tried using an open star tip at first, and then a closed star. The closed star tip has really deep ridges that allow the churro to expand and fry evenly. These ridges are so small, tons of bursting happening. They look like they were gonna explode, basically, so that's why we stopped the bake, and they look super pale. Go through your piping tip bag and find a large, closed star tip. That's what is gonna make the best churros. I mean, it would work in a pinch, but this is a much better shape. You're not gonna get the definition from this. While the next batch fries up, you know, for one to two minutes per side, just toss the first batch in cinnamon sugar. Want them coated before they cool down. Look at that, mm. Don't forget to flip these over. They're gonna take on color pretty quickly since we're cooking them at such a high temperature. You'll just be working in batches from the stovetop to your cinnamon sugar, and one thing I wanna tell you, if you spoon the cinnamon sugar over your churros, they will be really dark in color. If you want them to be on the lighter side, just drag them through the cinnamon sugar. There we go. These look so good. I can feel how crisp they're gonna taste in my mouth. I mean, they dissolve in this golden, like, cinnamon sugar bit of joy. Your churros will last one to two days in an airtight container in the refrigerator or up to two months in the freezer, but honestly, eat them all right away. They are so good just out of the fryer. These are delicious as is, but you could gild the lily and dip them in some ganache or warm dulce de leche, and just like that, they're ready to enjoy. What's so nice about these is they just dissolve the second they go into your mouth. So crisp and crunchy on the outside, but soft like a vanilla cloud on the inside. They're truly delicious, and you will destroy this whole plate in a few seconds. I hope you had a chance to make this delicious recipe, and if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button and check out my Latin playlist.