Recipe: Brazilian Roast Chicken Coxinha

Directions

• Chicken Preparation (Optional)
• If you want to, you can buy pre-cooked roast chicken thighs, removing the bones and skin, but this method will create nice juicy chicken as well as a great stock for the dough.
• For making the recommended full meal with the salpicao, use a full 1.1kg pack of chicken thighs and cook them all now via this method, using a quarter for the coxinhas.
• Skip the frying step for the thighs. This is to “seal in the flavour”, but we want the juices to contain flavour, too
• Add 5 minutes to the suggests cooking time (usually 30 minutes at 180°C fan)
• Once cooked, pour the juices into a measuring jug. Pour hot water to fill up to 250ml (we want the stock to still be warm when we make the dough).
• Remove the skin and bone from the chicken, allow to cool while making the dough.
• Dough
• Add 25g butter, the 250ml chicken stock and 100ml milk into a pan on a low heat.
• Add the 450g of plain flour and a pinch of salt and stir.
• Once the dough starts pulling away from the side of the pan, continue stirring and moving the dough (with the pan still on a low heat) for around 3-4 minutes (make sure it doesn’t stick and burn) until the dough is stuff.
• Cover and leave to rest for one hour (I let mine cool then stored it in the fridge for one hour
  
• Filling
• Cut the onion into small pieces, add oil and butter in a pan on medium-high heat and fry the onions until soft but not browned, remove the pan from the heat (it won’t be going back on, so turn the hob off).
• Cut the chicken into small chunks and add to the pan.
• Add in the tablespoon of mixed herbs, 2 tablespoons of Philadelphia/soft cheese and a small amount of salt and pepper (as desired)
• Mix well and chill until the dough is ready. Now is an ideal time to make the dips recommended above.
• Coxinhas
• Once the dough has rested, dust a chopping board with flower and remove the dough and filling from the fridge.
• Pull and roll the dough into roughly golf ball size balls. I made 8 with this mixture.
• Squash a ball into a bowl shape and add the filling, like this:
• Mould the dough up from the sides around the filling to cover and pinch the top to make a teardrop shape. Repeat for all Coxinhas.
• Dip the Coxinhas into a beaten egg and use another bowl to coat with breadcrumbs.
  
• Heat up the oil to 180°C and fry the Coxinhas a couple at a time for approximately 5 minutes until crisp and brown
• If needed, keep warm in an over at 110°C. While these are being fried, I recommend chopping the potato for the salad so it can be fried straight after the Cohxins.