Hungarian lángos: a yeasted potato flatbread, deep-fried, with garlic and sour cream
The flatbread sold at Hungarian markets, beach stalls around Lake Balaton and every village fair: a yeast dough enriched with boiled potato, stretched by hand into a thin centre and a thicker rim, then deep-fried. Straight out of the oil it is rubbed with a cut clove of garlic, spread with sour cream and buried under grated cheese. The potato in the dough is not just thrift — it gives lángos a soft, moist centre rather than a rubbery one.
Your own work in that: 40 min.
- Potatoes 35 min
- Dough 15 min
- Rising 60 min
- Shaping 10 min
- Frying 15 min
Step by step
0 / 7 doneBoil and rice the potatoes
Boil the potatoes in their skins until tender (about 25 minutes), peel them hot and press through a ricer. Spread on the counter and cool to lukewarm. Hot potato would kill the yeast.
Ingredients: 200 g potatoes · 400 g plain flour · 200 ml milk · 15 g fresh yeast · 1 tsp sugar · 1½ tsp salt
TipPotato starch binds a great deal of water in the dough, which is why lángos has a soft, moist crumb and does not turn rubbery.
Through a ricer, cooled to lukewarmKnead the dough
Cream the yeast with the sugar and 3 spoons of lukewarm milk and leave 10 minutes until frothy. Add the potato, the yeast mixture and the rest of the milk to the flour and salt; knead 10 minutes until smooth and soft. It should stick slightly to your hands — do not add more flour.
Soft and slightly tacky, no extra flourLeave to rise
Cover with a cloth and leave somewhere warm 60 minutes, until doubled. The dough should be full of bubbles and noticeably slack.
Doubled, full of bubblesShape six discs
Knock back and divide into 6 pieces. Stretch each by hand into a 20 cm disc: the centre should be thin, almost translucent, the rim twice as thick. Lay them on a floured cloth.
TipThe thin centre is not decoration. There the dough fills instantly with steam and balloons into crisp blisters; at an even thickness the middle stays raw and heavy.
Thin centre, thicker rim, 20 cm acrossFry at 175 °C
Heat oil about 3 cm deep in a wide pot (about 26 cm) to 175 °C. Add one disc at a time, laying it in away from you so the oil does not splash, and fry 60–90 seconds until golden underneath, then turn and fry 60 seconds more. Lift onto a rack. All six take about 15 minutes in total.
Ingredients: 1500 ml rapeseed oil · 4 cloves garlic · 250 g sour cream, 18 % · 250 g hard yellow cheese · ½ tsp salt
TipBelow 165 °C the dough soaks up oil and the lángos is greasy as a sponge; above 185 °C it browns outside and stays raw within. Between batches wait for the oil to come back up to temperature.
Three centimetres of oil, 175 °C, a minute a sideRub with garlic while hot
Halve a garlic clove and rub it hard across the hot surface of the flatbread until the clove starts to wear away. Sprinkle with salt.
TipThe hot, rough dough works like a grater and the heat draws out the garlic's aroma. On a cooled lángos the garlic smells weaker and tastes raw.
A cut clove across the hot crustTop and serve
Spread a thick layer of sour cream and bury it under grated cheese — enough that the dough barely shows. Eat at once, in your hand: after ten minutes lángos softens and loses its crispness.
Sour cream, a mound of cheese, eaten at once
Before you start
Sweet version
No garlic and no salt: dust the hot flatbread with cinnamon icing sugar, or spread it with jam. Around Lake Balaton both versions come out of the same pot.
With ham and onion
Ham slices and thin red onion on the sour cream, then the cheese. Many Hungarian stalls sell a ham version (sonkás) alongside the classic with sour cream and cheese (sajtos-tejfölös).
Heavy, greasy lángos
The oil was too cool or the dough too thick. Use a thermometer, fry one at a time, and remember the thin centre.
