Fried Chicken Pastries (Coxinha)

JustJanS's Note:

Be warned-I haven't made this. I want to, and needed to put it into a format I could follow more easily. The instructions were 'interesting" to say the least. When I make it I'll add any corrections I think are needed. Prep time and cook time are a bit of a guess, as is the yield. The recipe says it makes 60 bite sized or 30 medium sized coxinhas.

• Total Time: 2 hrs 8 mins
• Prep Time: 1 hrs 30 mins
• Cook Time: 38 mins

Ingredients:

Yield: 30 pastries

• 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• ½ onion , chopped
• 2 garlic cloves , minced
• 6 tablespoons butter
• 2 beef bouillon cubes
• salt & freshly ground black pepper
• 2 green onions , finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 8 ounces cream cheese
• 2 egg whites , whisked lightly
• breadcrumbs

Directions:

1. Cut chicken breasts into 2 inch cubes, and place in a saucepan with onion, garlic, margarine, stock cubes, salt and pepper and 3 cups of water.
2. Cook over medium heat for 30 minutes or until done.
3. Strain solids from broth, retaining broth and solids.
4. Finely chop the chicken to make the filling.
5. Add the parsley and chopped green onion to the chicken.
6. Measure the remaining broth into a saucepan-you will need 3 cups, so make it up with extra water.
7. Add all the flour, and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon for 1 minute until it becomes stiff.
8. Turn out, allow to cool a little, but while it is still warm, knead dough until it is smooth and no lumps of flour remain.
9. (About 10 minutes) Roll out dough to about 1/4 inch thick and cut medium sized circles with a biscuit cutter.
10. Place the dough in the palm of your hand, place a small cube of cream cheese and a teaspoon of the prepared filling.
11. Judge the filling to the size of the circle you cut-you have to be able to seal it!
12. Knead scraps and re-roll, and continue cutting until all the dough is used.
13. Fold and close the dough in the shape of a drumstick (the word Coxinha means "little drumstick" in Portuguese).
14. Brush the filled pastries with egg white and roll in breadcrumbs.
15. Deep-fry the snacks for 8 minutes at 350f or until golden brown.

Reviews

[Chef Me (Trini)]

Hey... this is a lot like a recipe for coxinha that I have from cookbrasil.com. I've made coxinha this way before but something is always a little amiss... so I have some suggestions. Forget the green onions and parsley... they don't add anything, only distract. Up your garlic to about 6 cloves (trust me on this!), only use two bouillon cubes if you can actually find Knorr brand cubes... they're DIVINE!!!... and two of those cubes are cool, you'll get the taste you want, but if all you can find are those tiny little Maggi-esque cubes then I'd go for six (again, trust). Toss all of your ingredients (minus the cream cheese, flour, eggs and bread crumbs of course) into a pressure cooker, bring that up to a whistle and let it whistle its little heart out for ten minutes! Your chicken will be perfection!!! in coxinha glory form! I cut my chicken across the grain rather than shred it and then I mix the chicken and everything I've strained from the liquid with the cream cheese... makes life much easier. And I have to agree with the greased palms! People... don't make these for a crowd unless you're prepared to be asked (or harrassed) to making dozens and dozens and DOZENS of these for every occasion possible! I have friends who have asked me to give them Coxinha instead of birthday and Christmas presents before now! Y'all will LOVE them!

[Transylmania]

This is a good recipe for coxinhas, though it lacks a few things that I always put in (some tomatoes and green peppers when boiling the chicken and milk and butter in the dough). In the end though, they tasted very much like the ones that I make. Some other pieces of advice, the closest thing to Brazilian catupiry would be laughing cow cheese, unless you can get catupiry and then use that for the cream cheese. These are a lot of work, but a birthday party isn't a birthday party without them.

[Muffin Goddess]

I used to work with a sweet Brazilian woman who would bring boxes of brigadeiros and bags of coxinhas into work for everyone in the kitchen (she would make the coxinhas right before work, so they were still hot, mmm!), but I lost touch with her when I changed jobs. I tried to recreate hers by using this recipe and adding some sliced green olives (dried with a paper towel) to the filling mixture. I haven't yet been able to perfectly recreate hers (I think she added something other than just olives, but I haven't nailed it down yet), but this is pretty darn close. Besides, they are really good in their own right - great party finger food. Like the previous reviewer said, though, you'll have quite a bit of chicken filling left over, but I usually just use it to make taquitos later on (I just don't tell my Mexican DH that his taquito filling is actually Brazilian, and he's none the worse off!) LOL