Argentinian cuisine

Argentinian empanadas

Name: Argentinian empanadas
Prep time: 50 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 75 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Argentinian cuisine
Ingredients: 600 g Beef; 4 Onions; 4 Spring onion; 3 Eggs; 80 g Green olives; 2 tsp Sweet paprika; 1 tsp Ground cumin; 1 tsp Chilli flakes; 24 Empanada discs; 3 tbsp Lard or oil; to taste Salt

Empanadas argentinas

Pastries of chopped beef, onion and egg. The filling is chilled cold, or the dough will not seal.

Prep: 50 min
Cook: 25 min
Total: 75 min
Difficulty: Medium

Servings

Units

Ingredients

Beef — chopped by hand600 g
Onions — finely diced4
Spring onion4
Eggs — hard-boiled and chopped3
Green olives80 g
Sweet paprika2 tsp
Ground cumin1 tsp
Chilli flakes1 tsp
Empanada discs24
Lard or oil3 tbsp
Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1
Fry the onion in the lard over medium heat for fifteen minutes, until soft and translucent, without letting it colour.
15 min
2
Add the chopped beef, paprika, cumin and chilli and cook five minutes: the meat should only lose its pink, no more.
5 min
3
Season, take it off the heat and cool it completely, then refrigerate for at least four hours.
240 min
4
Fold the chopped egg, olives and spring onion into the cold filling.
8 min
5
Put a tablespoon of filling on each disc, wet the rim, fold it over and crimp it into the plaited repulgue, folding the corners over one another.
25 min
6
Brush with yolk and bake at 220 °C for twenty minutes, until browned.
22 min

About the dish

The beef is chopped with a knife rather than minced. That is exactly what separates an Argentinian empanada from the rest: the filling has pieces in it, not a uniform paste.

The filling has to chill for several hours, better overnight. Warm, it leaks fat, the dough softens and tears at the crimp, and in the oven the filling runs out.

There is as much onion as beef by volume. It supplies the juiciness: without it the filling comes out dry however much fat goes in.

Worth knowing

— Crimp with the outside dry and only the very rim damp. Wet dough slips and opens in the oven.
— The cold filling should taste slightly over-salted: in hot pastry the salt reads weaker.
— Shaped empanadas freeze well and bake straight from frozen, five minutes longer.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories: 520 kcal
Protein: 26 g
Fat: 28 g
Carbs: 42 g

Useful for this recipe

Oven Temperature Converter