This churro maker lets you make fresh churros at home in literal minutes

Okay, so I am a person who has stood in line at a theme park for twenty minutes just to get a churro. Just one. A single churro. In the blazing heat. With no regrets.

So when I tell you that you can make fresh, hot, crispy churros at home in literal minutes — I need you to understand that this information changed something inside me.

The Nostalgia Churro Maker is one of those gadgets that sounds like a gimmick until you actually use it. And then you wonder how you ever lived without it.

What even IS a churro maker?

A churro maker is basically a countertop press — think waffle iron energy, but for churros. You mix a simple dough, load it into the barrel, and the machine heats up and cooks them in a couple of minutes flat. No deep fryer. No giant pot of oil. No smoke alarm situation.

The Nostalgia brand one is the most popular version out there, and it runs about $30. It comes with a barrel, a trigger press, and a few different disc shapes so you can do classic ridged churros or star-shaped ones if you’re feeling fancy.

Do they actually taste like real churros?

This is the question that matters. And honestly — yes. They’re not identical to the ones you’d get at a street cart in Mexico City, but they’re way closer than you’d expect from a $30 appliance.

The outside gets that signature crisp, the inside stays soft and a little doughy, and when you roll them in cinnamon sugar right out of the machine — which you absolutely should do immediately — they taste like the real thing. Warm, fresh, and completely dangerous to have in your house.

The key is not letting them sit. Eat them fast. This is not a food that gets better with time.

How hard is the dough to make?

Not hard at all — it’s essentially a choux-adjacent dough. Water, butter, flour, eggs, a pinch of salt. Some people add a little vanilla. The whole thing comes together in about ten minutes on the stovetop, and then you load it into the barrel while it’s still warm.

There are a million variations online, and the machine actually comes with a recipe booklet to get you started. But once you make it twice, you won’t need the booklet anymore. It makes sense because the dough is so simple you’ll have it memorized by accident.

Is it actually easy to clean?

This is where I want to be honest with you — because the cleanup is the part that can get annoying with any cooking gadget.

The barrel and discs are not dishwasher safe, so you’re washing them by hand. The dough can stick a little if you don’t grease the plates before you start, so don’t skip that step. A quick wipe-down after while everything’s still warm is the move.

It’s not hard. It’s just — don’t forget about it and let the dough dry in there. That’s all I’m saying.

What do you dip them in?

Okay this is where things get really good. The classic answer is cinnamon sugar — which you can make in about thirty seconds — and a side of chocolate sauce or dulce de leche for dipping.

But jalapeño cream cheese is the greatest food known to man, so I’m just going to put it out there that a spicy cream cheese dip alongside these is not a bad idea at all. Don’t come at me.

Other options worth trying — Nutella, caramel sauce, or a simple vanilla glaze if you want to lean more into dessert territory. There’s no wrong answer here.

Is the Nostalgia Churro Maker actually worth buying?

If you love churros even a little bit, yes. It’s around $30, it’s small enough to store in a cabinet, and it works. According to a review roundup from The Kitchn, countertop churro makers have become one of the more surprisingly functional novelty appliances on the market — which tracks with what I’ve seen.

The only people I’d tell to skip it are the ones who genuinely won’t make the dough from scratch. If you’re looking for something where you just plug in a frozen product — this isn’t it. The dough takes real (if minimal) effort.

But if you’re down to spend fifteen minutes total and end up with a plate of hot churros on a Tuesday night? This thing is absolutely worth it.

And for the record — in my last deep dive into kitchen gadgets that actually earn their counter space, the theme was the same. Simple, specific tools that do one thing really well beat multipurpose appliances every single time.

If you want to check out more recipes to pair with your new churro situation, the cheddar bacon ranch pinwheels post has the same energy — easy, fast, and completely impossible to stop eating.

The bar for a good kitchen gadget is simple — does it actually do what it says, and does the food taste good? The churro maker clears both.

Thirty dollars, fifteen minutes, fresh churros on a random weeknight. That’s the whole pitch. Some things don’t need to be complicated.

Now go make the cinnamon sugar first. Trust me on this one.

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