Brazilian coxinha: healthy recipe

If you never have tried Brazilian coxinha in your life, than you definitely should. Coxinha is a traditional salty snack from Brazil, which is basically deep fried dough stuffed with chicken filling and sometimes also with cheese.

The original version of coxinha sounds guilty, however tastes simply delicious.

In order to transform this delightful treat into a more healthy one without loosing original flavours, I came up with easy illustrated step by step recipe for you. ;)

To start with, I need to highlight that the process of cooking mainly consists of three steps which are making a dough, preparing a filling and coating a dough.

In this recipe we are going to prepare baked coxinha with a dough of cassava (mandioca) stuffed with more vegetables.

Here is the list of ingredients that you will need:

- about 1,2 kg of cassava root (mandioca)

- 1 celery stick

- 3 gloves of garlic

- 6 cherry tomatoes

- 1 small onion

- half of green bell pepper

- 2 eggs

- 2 bullion cubes

- 100 gr of shredded cheese (I used flamenco)

- 3 and a half of big chicken breasts (cooked and shredded)

- 70 gr of milk

- 250 gr of breadcrumbs

- 3 tb spoons of unsalted butter

- spices: sea salt, black pepper, garlic powder, dried parsley, nutmeg, dried oregano

1. First of all, wash your cassava roots (mandioca), peel and cut the endings.

2. Cut cassava into medium pieces and put into a pan filled with boiling water. Cook it for about 20-30 minutes until the root becomes softened. Check with a fork, when cassava is cooked cover a pan with a lid and leave it rest for 5-10 min.

3. Meanwhile, wash celery, tomatoes, bell pepper, peel garlic and onion. After cut these ingredients in tiny cubes.

4. Preheat the frying pan. In order to avoid the process of frying vegetables with oil, which makes your food more fat, we will use bullion cube and water instead.

Simply, pour some hot water into the pan, just enough to cover the bottom and then drop a few chunks of bullion cube into the water. Stir until dissolve. Then place all your chopped vegetables into a pan and mix time to time. Keep the heat low.

5. Within about 5 minutes add your spices.

6. When almost all the water in pan will evaporate, add shredded chicken into pan and mix well.

7. After this, turn of the heat and let it cool. The filing in the end should not contain any liquids and should remain dry.

8. Returning to the dough, strain the water from your cooked cassava. Mash cassava well with a fork.

9. Transform all the mashed cassava to the flat surface, add butter, 1 and a half of bullion cube. After this mix everything.

10. Knead the cassava dough until it comes together into a ball. If there are any sticks, take all of them from the dough and throw away.

11. To make a coating for the dough whisk well eggs and milk together.

12. To form the coxinha, take a small piece of cassava dough and roll it with your hands to form a small cup.

13. Place some of your chicken filling inside and press to make sure there is no air. Then add some cheese.

Tip for you: the more filling you add, the better coxinha will taste. ;)

14. In closing flower motion try to close down the borders of your coxinha till the top, so the filling remains inside. Make sure there are no holes in the dough.

15. After carefully closing your coxinha’s top, shape the form of chicken thigh (that’s where the name came from, from Portuguese coxa-thigh, coxinha-small thigh). If there is a need, you can take the excess of the dough carefully from the top.