Lángos

Ingredients

• Plain flour400 g
• Potato — boiled and mashed150 g
• Warm milk200 ml
• Dried yeast7 g
• Sugar1 tsp
• Garlic3 clove
• Soured cream200 g
• Hard cheese — grated150 g
• Oil for frying700 ml
• Salt1 tsp

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

   Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the warm milk and leave it ten minutes, until it foams.

   10 min

2. 2

   Mix the flour, mashed potato, salt and the yeast liquid and knead for eight minutes to a smooth soft dough. It stays a little tacky; that is right.

   10 min

3. 3

   Cover and prove for an hour in the warm: the dough should double.

   60 min

4. 4

   Divide into four, stretch each by hand into a twenty-centimetre round, leaving the edges thicker.

   10 min

5. 5

   Deep-fry at 175 °C for ninety seconds a side. It balloons; that is correct, do not press it down.

   12 min

6. 6

   Rub the hot bread with a cut clove of garlic, spread it with soured cream and pile on the cheese.

About the dish

Boiled potato goes into lángos dough. It holds moisture, and the bread stays soft even cold — without it you have a cracker within ten minutes.

The dough is stretched by hand rather than rolled, with the middle thinner than the edge. The thin middle balloons; the thick rim holds the topping.

The garlic is rubbed into the hot bread with a cut clove straight out of the fryer. On a cooled one it gives neither scent nor juice.

Worth knowing

• — The oil must stay under 180 °C. Hotter and the lángos darkens outside while staying raw within.
• — Stretch the dough with oiled hands rather than floured ones: spare flour burns in the fryer.
• — A sweet version exists and is common: icing sugar or jam in place of the cream and cheese.

Nutrition

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

Calories

640 kcal

Protein

18 g

Fat

32 g

Carbs

68 g

More from Hungary

• Goulash — Beef stewed with onion and paprika. There is as much onion by weight as meat, and it dissolves into the sauce.