For Hanukkah this year, Zak Stern — who has been called the “kosher king” of Miami — is frying up doughnuts at Zak the Baker, his bakery and cafe. But he’s also making churros, the sweet fritter of choice in much of Latin America, Spain and Portugal.

“Miami is filled with Latin Jews,” he said. “It’s a natural.”

It is. And in Miami, Los Angeles and New York, the long sticks of fried dough are popping up on ever more varied tables for Hanukkah, which begins this year on Dec. 22.

To prepare to make my first batch of churros, I visited the Piñata District in downtown Los Angeles, a Mexican and Central American food market mixed with party-supply vendors. There, I saw a big tub containing a dough so thick that the vendor had to mix it with an electric drill. Then he grabbed his churro maker, a long metal extruder that looks something like a bazooka, and shot long, curled strands of dough straight into a large vat of oil to rapidly fry. They were then removed, dusted with cinnamon sugar, and tucked in a paper bag that was emptied within minutes.

With their irresistible crunch, the churros were the opposite of sufganiyot, the spongy jelly doughnut popularized with the creation of the state of Israel.