Churros

Churros is the goto festival food of Spanish speaking countries, especially Mexico and Spain. Who knows when and how it first came to existence? Some say it was invented by Spanish shepherds. Others say it churros were discovered by Portuguese sailors in Northern China. Anyway, a churro is basically a doughnut. Can be made with yeast, but I’m making the quickest possible churro because this recipe is dedicated to those who want to get fat with the least effort. The dipping sauce is chocolate with a hint of vanilla and liquorice. If you hate liquorice, use star anis. If you hate that too, just make the chocolate sauce. I mean, you wouldn’t want to try anything weird, would you?

Ingredients for the churros

• 50 g of butter
• 1 vanilla pod
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 250 g of flour
• 250 g of water
• Two large pinches of salt (that’s about half a tablespoon)
• Neutral oil to deep fry (I use rapeseed oil, but you can use peanut oil or what not. Just don’t use olive oil, it doesn’t do well in high temperatures)

Ingredients for the chocolate sauce

• 2,5 dl full milk
• 2,5 dl full cream
• 1 medium size stick of natural liquorice root (like the size of half your underarm)
• 200 g of semi-dark chocolate (and semi-sweet. If you use none sweetened chocolate, you might need to add some sugar)

Instructions

First step: Preparing the churros batter

1. Melt the butter
2. Cut open the vanilla pod and scrape out all the seeds, and add them to the melted butter in a large bowl
3. Sift flour into the melted butter, together with baking powder and salt
4. Boil the water, because it gives a better texture and better flavour than cold water in this case. Slowly add it while mixing the dough. Preferably in a stand mixer on medium speed. You’ll notice how moist the dough is, and that’s good. It has to be soft enough to pipe. Which brings us to…
5. … Put it in a star tipped piping bag. Use the small star pipe. I know what you’re thinking, you want thick churros. You’ll get thick churros, they’ll swell up. If you use a large star pipe, you’ll end up with enormous churros that aren’t cooked properly in the center.
6. Leave the piping bag in room temperature, just let the dough rest in there.

Second step: Preparing the liquorice-chocolate sauce

1. Cut the liquorice root into smaller pieces. Like, just break it and split it, it’s a stick.
2. Put it in a saucepan together with the empty vanilla pod you used for the churros.
3. Add milk and cream
4. Cover the saucepan with a lid, and let it simmer for 30 minutes on very low heat.
5. Strain the liquid to remove pieces of vanilla pod and pieces of liquorice root. All the wonderful flavours and aroma is now in the fat cream mix.
6. Add the chocolate, and stir on low heat until it melts into the cream mix, and turns into a nice thick sauce.
7. Try it. Is it sweet enough? Like, not too sweet, because the churros will be covered in sugar, but at least there’s some sweetness to the chocolate, right? If not, add some sugar, but I believe there’s no need to.
8. Cover and leave it on low heat to just stay all warm and liquid.

Third step: cooking the churros

1. In a deep pan, heat up the oil to 170-175 degrees C. Enough oil for the churros to float without touching the bottom.
2. Squeeze out churros into the pan. After about a minute or so, turn them around to make sure they’re browned all over.
3. Transfer the churros to paper towels, and let them cool slightly and let the excess fat soak into the paper. Yes, you should eat churros hot, but if you put a really hot churro soaked in oil into the sugar mix, the sugar will form ugly coagulated pieces. Not an even coating.
4. Mix sugar and cinnamon in a deep plate, and roll the slightly cooled churros in the mix.
5. Quickly serve with the chocolate.
6. Now you have churros! Dip them in the goodness, and eat them while still hot!