How to Make Churros from Nopalito

Who doesn’t like a churro? Honestly?

Nopalito has a great reputation in San Francisco with two different locations in the Inner Sunset and Panhandle. It was actually one of the first dates that I went on with my girlfriend, so it happens to hold a special place in my heart. But so do churros.

This past Saturday, we had a pretty serious sweet tooth and looked up this recipe. We also happened to have all of the ingredients, and I think what this showed was how much you can elevate you cooking with a little bit of effort.

Are they hard to make? Well, not really but kind of is the short answer. Are they going to taste amazing? Yes. Are they going to look perfectly straight like in the pictures? Probably not, from my experience at least. But it’s worth it, so do it. If you have not had the pleasure of having a homemade churro, it blows any shitty fake music festival/ballpark churro out of the water.

Okay, now it is your turn…

Cookbook – Nopalito

Step 1 – Make the dough

Step 1 Ingredients –

Water – 1 Cup
Butter – 1 stick
Sugar – 1 Table Spoon
Salt – 1 Teaspoon
Cinnamon – 1 teaspoon
All Purpose Flour – 1 Cup
Eggs – 2 or 3 beaten – I’ll talk more about this

First, in your medium pot, combine all the ingredients except the flour and eggs over medium until the butter has melted and turn off the heat. Add all the flour and incorporate. Let this cool at least 20 minutes, so when you add the eggs they will not cook. Then stir in the eggs.

Chef’s note – My mixture came quite runny after adding three eggs. In the next step when you put the mixture in a piping bag, it was basically spilling through the end and had little to no control, so I would try adding 2 to start and if you think the dough needs to be more liquidy, go right ahead.

Step 2 – Piping the Churros

Step 2 ingredients:

Piping bag with an open star tip
Sugar – 1 cup
Cinnamon – 1 teaspoon
Canola oil for deep frying

Ok, so I think I should tell you about my churro experience before you get going. What you are going to do is pipe the churros directly into the hot oil. With a runny mixture, this can be extremely challenging and if you look at my churros, they look nothing like they should. Also, the book tells you to heat the oil to 375F, which is pretty damn hot and hotter than I have normally fried things. Also, it says it will take 3-7 minute per churros to cook, this is a load of shit and our took 45 seconds to 1 minute because the oil was so hot. So I would probably recommend the oil being in the ~325F range to have much more control when you are frying. If you have never piped, make sure to try and eliminate air holes inside the mix in the bag and be sure to give it a good squeeze when dropping into the oil.

Heat the oil to ~325F. On the side, have paper towels for the churros when they come out of the fryer. Mix the sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl. Next to the paper towels, have a plate of the sugar and cinnamon mixture. Pipe the churros one by one into the hot oil. Feel free to do a test piece or two if you are not confident, and pipe to your desired length. If they aren’t perfectly straight, do not worry, they may look fucked up but everyone will forget about the appearance when they taste them. Cook in the fryer, occasionally turning until each side is golden to dark brown. Once removed, from the fryer, transfer to the paper towels briefly, then move to and cover aggressively with the cinnamon sugar mixture.

Serve immediately for the most satisfaction. They are still pretty amazing heated up or cold the next day also. See that wasn’t that bad right? Leave your comments below about your experience and if you have any questions!

My ratings –

Difficulty of ingredients – 3/5 stars – normal trip to the store
Perceived difficulty going into recipe – 3/5 stars – not easy, not hard
Difficulty after recipe – 4/5 stars – My churros definitely came out deformed, so I want to go back and see what I did wrong. The batter was very loose and difficult to squeeze accurately into scolding hot oil. The taste was easily the best churro I have ever had though
Time Taken – 3/5 stars – Less than 2 hours
Taste – 5/5 stars – Best churros I have ever had
Make again – 5/5 stars – OH YEAH