Khaleh & Dyme's Crispy Chewy Churros

Intro:

For our project, we decided to make churros but not just any churros— red velvet churros. We’ve never made churros let alone ate them, so this experiment was new to us. We were surprised that churros were made with simple household ingredients(besides the red velvet cake mix).

The science of deep frying:

There are 4 stages to deep fry food. There is:

Initial heating: The heat from the oil is transferred to the food’s surface by diffusion and convection.

Surface boiling: Bubbles begin to form, meaning that the water is evaporating from the food and oil.

Decreasing heat transfer rate: as the crust forms on the outside of the food, the amount of heat going to the rest of the food decreases and most of the moisture is lost, so the bubbling slows.

Bubbling end point: At this point, very few bubbles are forming, water from the food is not evaporating, and the food should be removed or it will become soggy.

Experiment and Results

The independent variable in our experiment was the duration of our deep frying process. All of our ingredients, quantities, and procedures were kept constant.

Recipe and Instructions

1. In a pot over medium heat, bring 2 cups water, ¼ cup sugar, and 4 tablespoons unsalted butter to a boil.
2. Add 1 cup flour and 1 cup red velvet cake mix and stir.
3. Remove from heat and add 2 eggs, stirring until the dough becomes a ball.
4. Transfer dough to a piping bag, and pipe 3-4 inch strips on a baking sheet and freeze for 30 minutes.
5. Heat canola oil over medium-high heat.
6. Fry churros for desired time.
7. Remove from oil.

Trial One - 2 minutes

During this trial, the churros were still the same vibrant color as they were prior to frying them. After we let the churros cool down to be able to eat them, we noticed that they were very soft at the touch and were easy to break apart. They tasted very dough like and weren’t very appetizing.   

Trial Two - 4 minutes

These set of churros turned out better than expected. The color of them were reddish brown. When we tasted them, they were sweet and tasted exactly like churros. The texture of them was very chewy and bouncy but firm.

Trial Three - 6 minutes

During the final trial, the churros completely turned black. They were hard and inedible, so we weren’t able to complete a taste test.

To summarize, the three trials of churros were distinctly different due to the duration of the frying process. First, the churros became darker the longer that they remained in the fryer. This is because the oil made the crust harder due to a loss of moisture from the churros. The less time the food cooked, the chewier it became because not enough moisture was lost. The frying process was crucial to how the churros came out. The texture, the taste, and the consistency of the churros depend on how long they were frying because the longer the food sits in the oil, the more moisture is pulled from the food, giving it the ability to crust over. Lastly, the taste of the food was affected. The less time we cooked the churros, the more doughy they tasted because there wasn’t enough time for convection to cook the inside or for the crust to form on the outside. The more time we cooked the churros, the crunchier they became because of a lack of any moisture.