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Picarones Recipe


  • Prep Time: 20 minutes
  • Cook Time: 5 minutes
  • Total Time: 25 minutes
  • Yield: 16 doughnuts 1x

Description

The most popular fried dough of Peru. 


Ingredients

Scale
  • Enough water to cover your sweet potato and zapallo, about 16 ounces (500 ml). Feel free to add more, you need some liquid for use in the recipe. 
  • 250 grams  (7 ounces) of peeled sweet potato
  • 250 grams (7 ounces) of peeled zapallo (or pumpkin with green skin)
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 1 teaspoon of whole anise 
  • 2 cloves
  • 3 tablespoons of sugar
  • 10 grams of instant yeast (1 tablespoon)
  • 500 grams ( 1 pound) of all purpose flour
  • oil for frying
     
    For the sauce:
  • 200 grams of panela, piloncillo, chancaca
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 1/2 orange 
  • 1 fig leaf (leave out if you can’t find one)
  • 2 whole cloves
  • Boil all ingredients with 1 cup of water (250 grams) until it thickens and becomes a syrup. Strain and set aside. 

Instructions

1. Boil the sweet potato, pumpkin, cinnamon stick, anise and cloves. Remove the pumpkin and sweet potato and puree in a blender with a small amount of the liquid. Reserve the rest of the liquid for the yeast and dough. 
2. Use 1/2 cup  (60 grams) of the reserved liquid  from boiling the pumpkin and add the instant yeast and sugar. Let sit for 15 minutes  in a warm place until it grows. Use a container that is very big, this will grow a lot. 
3. Mix the liquid/yeast with puree and flour and 1 cup (250 grams) of reserved liquid from boiling. Add half of the water at a time, if the dough comes together  and you don’t see any more dry flour, you don’t have to uset he rest of the water. Mix well, with your hands or in a mixer. You need to get the dough light and airy. Mix for about 5 to 10 minutes. 

4. Place in a bowl, cover with towel and let sit for 2  hours until it rises. Make sure bowl is big enough to support the growth of the dough. 
4. Heat oil to 330F (165C). With moist or oiled hands, take a bit of the dough and form a ring; drop in the oil and using a wooden chop stick rotate from the center. Flip once it turns light brown. Remove from oil and let sit on a plate lined with a paper towel. 

*If the dough is too sticky, add more oil or flour to your hands. If they dough is still too sticky, add a spoonful of flour and mix until you get a dough that is strong enough for you to form into a ring. This dough is meant to be sticky. 

Notes

All the sweetness of the dough comes from the sugar syrup. The doughnuts alone do not have any sweetness. 

Watch this video for frying technique.




  • Category: fried dough
  • Method: mix and fry

Keywords: picarones, peru, fried doughs, churros