Chef Owner Volkhart Caro

Honing the Churro Craft

The churro craze continues to live on years after going viral. Share with us your flavor process for making Churros King’s churros stand out amongst the crowd.

What characterizes our product and makes it very popular is that we make everything from scratch. Many other churros are frozen coming from the States but each of ours are made fresh, on-site at least half an hour before they're expected to be fried and served to customers.

Describe the techniques and process behind the making of your handmade churros.

My mother is actually the one who makes the dough with our giant mixer. It can make about 20 kilos of dough in one shot, this takes five minutes or so.

We then take the dough and load it into our special churro machine in 5-pound pieces. The machine must be calibrated to provide the right amount of pressure. The dough is extruded in a star shape and, depending on the calibration, can come out with different textures. From there, it glides into oil as the machine cuts the churro into perfect measurements. You just have to make sure the pieces don't overlap and stick onto each other as they go through the oil. They should be evenly spread in the bath for deep-frying.

Once this is complete, we add the icing sugar and all our different toppings like chocolate fudge and homemade caramel.

What are the biggest flavor challenges you face when preparing your churros?

The biggest challenge with a churro is the deep-frying process. You can't over or undercook them and we always have to be checking the oil for freshness. As soon as it gets over-worked or dark, it has to be changed because old oil will make the churro bitter.

Your churros themselves are properly made and ready when they have a golden yellow color. They shouldn’t be pale or brown. The golden hue should be just like honey.

Define Volkhart Caro’s signature churro.

My signature churro is actually a memory of mine from when my father and I made the world's longest churro. This was on August 6^th, 2000 and it broke the Guinness World Record at 77 meters (252.62 feet) in length and 30 kilograms in weight.

We made it the old-fashioned way where you pump the churro into the oil, without cutting it, doing so in coils. It couldn't be sliced in any way, the process had to be continuous as it got bigger and bigger.

So, what’s next for Churros King? How are you planning on taking churros to the next level in terms of flavors and ingredients?

We're going to continue the tradition we've had from my late father, starting in 1988, of participating in festivals in Edmonton with the family. Our aspirations are to eventually open cafes serving churros as well.

We've also started serving churros with soft-serve ice cream and manjar, a homemade caramel, in a 2-churro sundae. We're going to work on making this more popular for the summer season like last year when we first introduced it.