Empanadas de pino

Ingredients

• Flour600 g
• Rendered pork fat120 g
• Milk — warm200 ml
• Beef — diced, not minced600 g
• Onion5
• Eggs — hard-boiled3
• Black olives12
• Raisins60 g
• Paprika1 tbsp
• Ground cumin2 tsp
• Salt and pepperto 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. 1

   Dice the onion and sweat it in fat for twenty minutes over a low heat; it should turn sweet, not brown.

   22 min

2. 2

   Add the meat, paprika and cumin and stew twenty minutes. By volume there should be at least as much onion as meat.

   22 min

3. 3

   Chill the filling for at least three hours, ideally overnight.

   10 min

4. 4

   Knead a dough from the flour, melted fat, warm milk and salt. Work it ten minutes and rest it half an hour.

   40 min

5. 5

   Roll out twenty-centimetre rounds. On each go two spoons of filling, an olive, a quarter egg and a pinch of raisins.

   20 min

6. 6

   Fold into a parcel, seal the edges and turn them over twice. Prick the top with a toothpick so steam can escape.

   15 min

7. 7

   Brush with yolk and bake at 200 °C for twenty-five minutes, to a deep gold.

   27 min

About the dish

Chilean empanadas are baked rather than fried, and they are large — one counts as a portion. The dough is made with rendered pork fat, which is what makes the crust flaky.

The filling is cooled completely, ideally cold. Warm, it steams, the pastry inflates and splits along the seam in the oven.

The olive inside is a marker rather than a garnish: it is how pino is told apart from other fillings, and it goes in with its stone, which guests are warned about.

Worth knowing

• — The meat is cut with a knife, not minced. The dice is the texture the whole thing exists for; mince turns the filling into paste.
• — The seam is folded twice and pressed with a fork. A single fold opens and the juices run onto the tray.
• — They are served with pebre, a sauce of coriander, onion and chilli. It cuts the richness of the pastry.

Nutrition

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

Calories

590 kcal

Protein

26 g

Fat

29 g

Carbs

55 g

More from Chile

• Pastel de choclo — A bake of meat filling under a lid of ground sweetcorn, with an olive and an egg inside.