Churros

Completely unrelated to Japan is the super tasty Mexican dessert known as the churro. Thanks to a little wiki-chain (Mister Donuts -> Fast Food restaurants Japan -> FF Restaurants USA -> Taco John’s -> Churros) I now know that churros, despite us calling them Mexican desserts, actually comes from Spain (according to wiki anyways, but the articles cites no sources). Normally, without sources I would be in a considerable amount of doubt, but I would actually guess that they came over to Latin America and the “New World” with Spanish explorers. Supposedly, churros themselves came with Portuguese explorers from China originally, stemming from the Chinese donut (aka, youtiao). Because they did not know the proper technique for making the Chinese donut, they used their own, creating the five pointed star shaped churro we all know and love. According to someone on wiki, anyways.

Another website actually says that it was invented by shepherds as a food that could be easily cooked in a pan or even over a plain fire. From there it spread to Latin America. This website supports that idea as well, since they say that frying the bread was the only way to prepare their bread since “the microwave had not been invented yet.” Um, what happened to baking bread as a method of preparation?

Actually, this would be super interesting to figure out where it really came from, mostly because I love learning about where things originated (must be the Japanese side of me) and I love food.

Interesting food for thought though, even if it doesn’t actually cite any sources.

Oh, and through a google search, churro is also, apparently, a type of sheep. And supposedly the people who make the churro are called churreros.

They actually have churros here in Japan, though I haven’t been able to find a decent one like the ones back at home. The ones here… aren’t crunchy at all. They’re this kind of soft, donut like thing that, while tasty, doesn’t have the juxtaposition of crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside like churros do. And they had a glaze; no sprinklings of sugar waiting to drop nicely onto your pants. Those were just the churros at Mister Donuts though. I have the suspicion that if I go to Disneyland, I’ll be able to find a nice proper churro.