Air Fryer Churros Recipe

Hey, I'm John Kanell, and today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making some easy, delicious air fryer churros. So let's get started. This comes together so quickly. We have two things to do. First, we're gonna measure the flour out. I want three quarters of a cup, or 90 grams of all-purpose flour, just in a little bowl set aside. Now, in a medium pot, I'm gonna combine my other ingredients, starting with a quarter cup of unsalted butter. That's 56 grams. Two thirds of a cup of water, 160 mils. And a scant two teaspoons of granulated sugar. One, and two. I also want a quarter teaspoon of salt, just for some contrast. Now, grab a wooden spoon, and set this over medium-high heat. We are making choux. Choux is one of my favorite kinds of dough. Use it to make eclairs, cream puffs, and churros. It's super easy, really versatile, and you can air fry it. Once this comes to a boil, take it off heat and dump your flour in. Then stir your little heart out with your wooden spoon until it forms a ball. Then we can take it back onto heat. I wanna explain that because it happens really fast. For example, my water is now boiling, so I'm gonna take this off heat and dump my flour in. Stir, stir, stir. Oh, I see a ball. My dough came together, it formed a ball, and now I'm gonna place this onto medium-low heat and continue to stir for one to two minutes. At this point, I'm cooking the flour and getting rid of excess moisture. That is done, I'm taking it off heat, and now we're gonna grab our stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Grab your pot, and we're gonna dump the flour in, or a ball of dough. Right now, this is a bit too hot. If I added my eggs in, they might scramble, so let's cool it down by running the mixer on medium. Give it about three minutes. Okay, this is mixed up and cooled. I'm gonna add two large eggs in, one at a time, and I'm being responsible today and checking for shells. All clear. Back to medium speed. Egg number one. You'll see the texture completely change. It'll become very silky and luscious. And two. And at this point, I'll also add half a teaspoon of vanilla. This looks good, but I wanna scrape the bowl down. By the way, if you like my videos, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. There's two new recipes every single week. So, your dough should be silky, glossy, and thick with a little bit of slackness to it. This is different from a shoe that I would make for deep frying of the oven. It's okay for it to be a bit thicker in the air fryer. Bloop. There we go. This is ready to pipe out. Your churros should be about four inches long and 3 1⁄4 of an inch thick or so. So, I am going to give myself a little guide just to help me out. And if you're thinking, gosh, I don't wanna eat any pencil marks, that sounds gross. You're not going to, because we're gonna flip this upside down. I am so bad at measuring that it's much easier for me to have pencil marks. Okay, that's there. Grab a piping bag and a large closed star tip. Give it a snip. And now we're gonna fill our piping bag up. If I was deep frying these, and first of all, churros are one of my favorite Los Angeles snacks where I'm from, my mom would also make them fresh. So, I'm pretty picky about them. A lot of times when you go to stands, they've been made a long time ago, so they're fairly stale, which I don't love. Put your bag under tension, and we're just going to pipe our shapes. I have a pair of scissors handy here. If I need to, I can snip the dough so I can have even churros. Churros. As you pipe, it's nice to have your piping tip hovering just above the parchment. Don't worry about this little tail. We can fix that. Push the dough out while pulling, and then you stop. Just finish it up. I'm gonna try some where I snip. It's a little neater. Very relaxing and satisfying to do this, by the way. Normally when you're making regular churros, you're deep frying them, so this is going right into the oil, and you can snip it. But the other way to do it is to freeze these, and then this goes frozen into our air fryer. This is so much more relaxing, to be honest, because there's no boiling oil, and the shape is so much better, for me at least. You can space these closely. They will be frozen and pulled off, so if you have extra room, just pipe some extra churros. If you have any bits that are sticking way up, dampen your fingers and just tap it back in. So tap, tap, tap. This won't stick if your fingers are damp. My churros are ready to go into the freezer for half an hour until they are nice and firm. You could also keep these frozen for up to two weeks if you wanna air fry them later, or do this in batches. In the meantime, grab your air fryer and be ready. My churros have frozen, so now I can pull them off of the paper really easily. These go right into my air fryer basket, spaced one inch apart. Set your air fryer to eight minutes at 375. Pop it in. Once that dings at me, we're gonna flip those over and reduce to 325 and cook for an additional eight minutes or until they're golden brown and dry in the center. These guys can live in the freezer. You don't want them to warm up while you wait that 16 minutes. But because I have a lot of gadgets, I have different kinds of air fryers, just like you do at home. This is called a basket air fryer, but I also have the combi air fryer. I love both of them, but I think the way that you will cook them is a little bit different. If you have an air fryer that's a combination of an air fryer with that little wonderful metal basket, we're gonna do this a bit differently. If you're cooking them in a combo unit, I would have these on parchment paper to begin with. So just gonna cut this up. Now I'll snip these individually. For the combo unit, we will start at 400 and then reduce to 350, also eight minutes for each one. Once it's preheated, now you can pop them in. Place those onto your preheated baskets, spaced apart, and now these go into air fry as well. Ooh, look how nice those look. So flip those over. Mm, they look like little eclairs. Once my combo unit churros are ready, I removed the papers, turned them over, and set them for 350 for another eight minutes. My churros are out of the air fryer and into my hot little hands, but because we didn't deep fry them, nothing, well, a little cinnamon sugar sticks, but that's not how we're gonna play this. We want more cinnamon sugar on here, so in the air fryer basket, we're gonna give these a nice spray with any kind of a neutral oil. It could be avocado oil. I like coconut oil, but I like the flavor of coconut. Spray, spray, spray, shake, shake, shake. The recipe calls for cinnamon sugar, i.e. half a cup of granulated and one and a half teaspoons of cinnamon. I gave this a mix, but I didn't. I actually have cinnamon sugar in my pantry at all times. So grab some cinnamon sugar, plop your churros in now, fresh out of the air fryer, and you can just give them a little toss, just like that. Once your churros are covered, you can plop them onto a platter and have them sit while you complete the rest, or you can pop them right into your mouth. Enjoy as is, or dip in some ganache or dulce de leche. Either way, these guys will be delicious. Soft and airy on the inside, perfectly sweet from being kissed with cinnamon sugar, and nice and crisp on the outside. I hope you get a chance to make this easy air fryer recipe, and if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button and check out my air fryer playlist.