Rissois are a very traditional Portuguese deep fried dish like a croquette which are made with various types of filling typically with some sort of meat. This dish is not necessarily the simplest to make but it is guaranteed to be totally delicious. Our recipe here can be used to make rissois with either beef or shrimp, but you could also substitute something like cod fish just in the same.

Ingredients
Dough
– 4 cups of water
– 1.5 tablespoon of butter
– 1 boullion cube
– 3 tablespoons of olive oil
– 4 cups of flour
Add butter, bouillion cube, and olive oil to the water. Bring to a boil. Add flour and stir until all ingredients are combined. Take off stove and put dough on a floured surface to cool.

Beef Filling (for approximately 30 rissois)
– 2 lbs of ground beef
– 3 cloves of garlic
– 3 tablespoons of olive oil
– 1/2 cup of water
– 1 tablespoon of minced garlic
Combine everything in a pot on medium heat. Cook until beef is done. Remove from heat and using an immersion blender blend until the beef is finely cut. (Not a puree.)

Shrimp Filling (for approximately 30 rissois)
– 2 lbs of small shrimp
– 4 tablespoons of olive oil
– 3 tablespoons of flour
– 1/4 cup of water
– 1 tablespoon of piri piri (hot sauce)

Directions
1) Warm olive oil on medium heat. Then add flour, constantly stirring. Once combined, add water and piri piri, still stirring. Once combined, add shrimp until it’s cooked. The mixture should be creamy – not too runny. Add more water or flour to make it thicker or thinner.
2) First make the dough. Once it’s properly combined, spread it over a floured surface to cool. The dough at this point will be pretty chunky and coarse:

3) Take each individual ball and knead until the dough is smooth. Then with a rolling pin, roll the dough to about 1/8 inch thickness:

4) Next, add a tablespoon of filling. In our case we used the beef and shrimp fillings above.

5) Fold the dough over the filling, and then use a cup to cut a half moon pastry:

6) The next step is to dunk the rissois in an egg wash followed by tossing them in breadcrumbs.
7) When you are ready to fry them, fry them in vegetable oil at medium heat. They will turn goldeny delicious, and that’s when you know they are done, Enjoy!

*We got this recipe and pictures from Andrea at Our Little Gems, she has some great easy to make Portuguese recipes so check her out as well.