Churros or something quite like them?

December 19, 2008 6:53 PM

What's a home-made substitute for churros?

Mr. Listener has a yen for churros like we had in Mexico -- basically one-inch thick strings of deep fried dough with a rich cinnamon flavour and coated in sugar. What would be a good thing to make at home that is similar? The site search turned up this recipe for monkey bread but I'm not sure what a can of biscuits is so I really can't run with that one. (What is a can of biscuits? I like to make things from scratch.)

posted by Listener to Food & Drink (15 answers total)

A can of biscuits is the biscuit dough that you buy at the supermarket. They're like cheap junk food biscuits and they cost maybe 50 cents for six. Example.

I'm not sure how much you want to recreate the churro experience as opposed to the taste. I also love churros but without a deep fryer they're hard to mimic. I also like these snacky items, not the same but similar.

Cinnamon toast - toast bread part-way, slather with butter and cinnamon-sugar, put back in and toast until it starts to bubble, serve with a glass of cold milk.

Cinnamon crunchos - take flour tortillas, cut them into slices, fry them up in a hot skillet and dust with cinnmon sugar, serve hot and with a glass of cold milk.
posted by jessamyn at 7:01 PM on December 19, 2008

My mother used to make something almost exactly like that monkey bread recipe, and she did it with biscuit dough she made herself. I think a typical can of biscuit dough is about 10 ounces. You can substitute the two cans that recipe calls for with 1.25 pounds of biscuit dough made from scratch.
posted by katillathehun at 7:02 PM on December 19, 2008

You can make churros at home with a churro maker and a deep pot of oil or deep fryer. The churro maker is important. It flutes and thins out the tube of dough so the churro dough (recipes are online) does not explode across the entire length of your apartment during the frying process.

My Latin teacher's 'dip chunks of slightly stale bread in water, fry, and cover in honey/walnuts' recipe can be modified to 'dip in cinnamon-sugar and chocolate,' and the fluffy fried taste is similar.
posted by cobaltnine at 7:12 PM on December 19, 2008

Aaarg, and by 'dip chunks of bread in water' I really, really mean milk.
posted by cobaltnine at 7:13 PM on December 19, 2008

When I was in culinary school we did it by making doughnut dough and putting it through a pastry bag with a large star tip.

This will do:

http://www.cooking-mexican-recipes.com/churro-recipe.html
posted by legotech at 7:26 PM on December 19, 2008

Costco sells churros. (They have some in Vancouver, but I can't vouch for churros in every Costco)
posted by Stewriffic at 7:44 PM on December 19, 2008

Here is a recipe (that I have not yet tried, but I've been meaning to) that seems perfectly do-able in a normal home kitchen.
posted by kitty teeth at 8:03 PM on December 19, 2008

I believe Jack In The Box also sells churros.
posted by jschu at 8:45 PM on December 19, 2008

Heat a stick of butter (1/4 lb) with a cup of water and a decent sized pinch of salt until it boils, reduce the heat to low and add a cup of white flour and stir until it comes together, remove it from the heat and mix in three eggs. Dump the batter into a pastry bag with a large star tip then pipe out the churros into a wide pot of hot oil, flip them when they're browned on one side (straight churros want to flip back over to the already cooked side, so I try to pipe them with a bend in them, like a banana). Once the churros are cooked toss them with cinnamon and sugar. Eat, repeat.
posted by foodgeek at 8:59 PM on December 19, 2008

My sister-in-law made churros from the recipe in this book last year, and they were delicious. She didn't use a deep-fryer, just a big pot of oil and a thermometer, and I don't think she had to acquire any other special equipment, but I'm not certain.

If you like desserts, you will find other recipes in that cookbook that will kill you with goodness. There's a pecan-chocolate chip cookie recipe in there, oh man...
posted by doift at 9:08 PM on December 19, 2008

I've seen boxes of churros for sale in the frozen foods sections in lots of supermarkets. Costco, Fred Meyer, and I think Albertsons, too, maybe others. Googling "frozen churros" brings up a bunch of suppliers, and this one has a little "where can I find it?" thing where you type in your zip code and it tells you the nearest suppliers.
posted by Forktine at 6:23 AM on December 20, 2008

Monkey bread is great, but it doesn't taste like churros.
posted by majikstreet at 8:17 AM on December 20, 2008

Cinnamon crunchos - take flour tortillas, cut them into slices, fry them up in a hot skillet and dust with cinnmon sugar

At Mexican restaurants/taco stands, they call these buñuelos.
posted by LionIndex at 8:49 AM on December 20, 2008

I can personally vouch for monkey bread being amazingly, fantastically, mind blowingly, omfg awesome. Especially if you use a little more butter & sugar than the recipe calls for. Make sure to use real butter. You can make monkey bread with any sort of bread or biscuit dough: I've had it made with canned biscuit dough, home made biscuit dough, or (thawed) raw frozen bread dough rolled in little balls. They all end up tasting about the same.
posted by cuddles.mcsnuggy at 10:19 AM on December 20, 2008

Pie crust. Surplus pie crust.
posted by fourcheesemac at 1:00 PM on December 20, 2008