Coxinha

Ingredients

• Chicken breast600 g
• Flour500 g
• Chicken stock700 ml
• Butter60 g
• Catupiry or cream cheese200 g
• Onion1
• Garlic3 clove
• Tomato paste1 tbsp
• Eggs3
• Breadcrumbs300 g
• Parsley30 g
• Oil for frying1.5 l
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Poach the chicken in salted water for twenty minutes, lift it out and pull it into threads. Keep the broth.

   25 min

2. 2

   Fry the onion and garlic, add the chicken, tomato paste, parsley and salt and cook five minutes.

   10 min

3. 3

   Bring the broth and butter to the boil, add all the flour at once and work it on the heat for five minutes.

   10 min

4. 4

   Turn the dough onto the table and knead it by hand until it is smooth and stops sticking.

   12 min

5. 5

   Flatten a piece of dough on your palm, add filling and a little catupiry, seal it and draw it into a teardrop with a point.

   35 min

6. 6

   Coat in egg and crumbs, repeat once more and chill them twenty minutes.

   30 min

7. 7

   Fry in batches at 175 °C for four minutes, to a deep gold.

   20 min

About the dish

The dough is cooked: flour goes into boiling chicken broth and is worked on the heat until it pulls away from the sides. Raw dough does not work here — it will not hold a shape.

The shape, a teardrop with a point, imitates a drumstick. The legend has coxinha invented for a child of the imperial family who would eat only thighs, on a day when there were not enough.

They are breaded twice: egg, crumbs, egg again, crumbs again. A single coat splits in the oil and the filling escapes.

Worth knowing

• — Shape the dough while it is warm. Cooled, it cracks as you form it and the filling escapes into the oil through the cracks.
• — Draw the point out with your fingers rather than tearing it. A torn one leaves a seam, and that is where it opens first.
• — Coxinhas freeze well once breaded. Fry them from frozen with a minute and a half added.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

520 kcal

Protein

24 g

Fat

26 g

Carbs

48 g

More from Brazil

• Feijoada — Black beans stewed with several cuts of smoked and salted pork, served with orange and greens.
• Pão de queijo — Cheese balls of tapioca starch — a crust outside, a stretchy hollow inside. No wheat and no yeast.
• Moqueca baiana — Fish stewed in coconut milk with dendê palm oil, in a clay pot.