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 isela's buÑuelos Recipe

Isela teaches us her delicious family recipe for "Buñuelos de rodilla" or "knee fritters.” The dough was traditionally shaped upon the knees of women, hence the name. The two tricks to making this Mexican style fried dough is to incorporate air into the dough by lifting and slapping and to roll them out thin enough so that the dough is almost transparent. When you fry the buñuelos they should immediately form tiny bubbles which leave you with the most irresistible crunch.

directions:

prep: infuse the water

45 minutes (15 minutes to boil,  30 minutes to cool down

  1.  Infuse the water with the aniseed and tomatillo skins. Do this by adding the skins and aniseed into a small pot with 3 cups of water. Bring the water to boil, shut it off, and let it cool.

  2. When you are ready to make the dough, remove the aniseed and tomatillo skins from the water.

buÑuelos ingredients:

buÑuelos recipe: 
makes 12, 10 inch discs
prep Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
dough proofing time: 2 hours
forming and frying time: 3o minutes
total time: 4 hours 15 minutes

prep: Making the dough

2.5 hours (30 minutes to prep,  2 hours to rest)

  1. On a flat, large surface, form a mound of flour and make a hole in the center of the mound. Add the eggs, the sugar, and the pork fat in the center.

  2. Using your hands, mix all these ingredients together. As you mix, add the water little by little (poco a poca as they say in Mexico!)

  3. Once the dough forms into one structure and you've incorporated all the flour, knead it and slap it on the surface to incoporate air into it!*

    • *You'll want to incorporate a little air into the dough so that you can have very light, airy buñuelos when you fry them. To do this, Isela's trick is to slap the dough on your kneading surface as you form it and knead it. 

  4. Cover the dough and let it rest for 2 hours.

forming the buÑuelos

1 hour

  1. Add flour to the table and to your clothed knee if you want to make these the traditional way* ​

  2. Form baseball size balls of dough

  3. Flatten out the dough using your knees*, your hands or a rolling pin

    • *the full name of this recipe is buñuelos de rodilla or knee fritters because traditionally women would form the buñuelos using their knee to stretch the dough

  4. Flatten them into circular discs so that they are no bigger that the diameter of your frying pan and so thin that you can almost see through them

  5. Fry the buñuelos one at a time until they are golden on each side. You will be able to see how well you slapped the air in the dough by the presence of little air pockets in the fried bunuelos

  6. Remove the buñuelos to a paper towel

  7. Once they cool, add a healthy swirl of the one and only evaporated agave syrup aka Jarabe de Maguey Saniz and enjoy!! 

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