OT - Exploding churros

[cookworm]

Okay, please don't laugh at my cooking disaster! I need some advice here. I like homemade churros, and have a very easy recipe to make them that uses only flour, water, and salt for the churro ingredients, and oil to cook the churros in. I like this recipe because it's stuff I always have on hand (some of the other recipes have milk, eggs, and/or butter, and that's stuff that I run out of mid-recipe sometimes). Anyway, every time I've made them, the churros burst in the hot oil, leaving a crispy outer shell, but nothing inside. If it weren't so dangerous and painful, it would probably be a comical sight--churros exploding right out of the fryer!--but hot oil spattering from the little "missles" burned my arm pretty bad once. Today, I thought I'd "outsmart" the churros and put a lid on the fryer, but guess what happened? The exploding churro busted the lid right off of the fryer!!!

So I guess my question is has this happened to anybody else, or do you know what may have caused this to happen? This site says "Too low an oil temperature, and the churros will “boil” in the oil, absorbing grease but bursting apart before they’re brown; too high a temperature, and they’ll brown quickly but not cook enough"--could it be that I am having my oil too low of a temperature? I thought it was high enough. What I finally did today was to use a cookie press and just do the dough into flat "ribbons", and then I poked holes in the frying dough with a knife while they were frying, hoping that it would prevent them from bursting. It did, but they aren't traditional that way, and it made for more work than it should've been. I guess I could give up making them, but now it's become kind of a quest for me to find out what I'm doing wrong and correct it. Any suggestions?

[Sara]

It sounds as though your oil isn't hot enough. I wouldn't make them again without a thermometer on hand to make sure the oil is at the correct temp. No lids! Burns hurt! I still have scars from a run-in with oil 22 years ago.

Good luck!

[janelanespaintbrush]

A splatter screen might help contain the oil without allowing the pressure to build up, as a regular lid would. I have a cheap mesh one, but the Oxo at Amazon looks pretty nifty. (At first I was confused because it looked solid in the picture, but if you look at the larger view, it really does have little holes in it to allow the air to escape without build up.)

[stitchwitch]

Yummmmm, churros!!!

[cookworm]

Sara, I think next time I will try to use hotter oil. I think maybe I inadvertently I used oil that wasn't hot enough for fear of burning the churros. And Jane, that idea of the spatter screen is a good one. It's one of those things I keep meaning to buy, but just don't. I get all of these 20% off coupons for Bed, Bath & Beyond, but never buy it. And it's something I really could use.

Stitchwitch--I love your avatar! My sister and I LOVED the Heat Miser and Snow Miser...well, it was a love/fear thing. We were kind of afraid of them too! A few years back, she bought me Christmas ornaments of both of them, and every year I put them on the tree, I giggle.

Thanks for your help everybody!