Empanadas

Ingredients

Dough

• 600 gplain flour
• 2 tspfine salt
• 150 ggrasa de pecho (beef suet) or lard, melted and cooled
• 250 mlwarm salted water
• 1egg, for glazing

Relleno (filling)

• 800 gbeef, ideally roast beef or chuck, cut by hand into 1 cm dice
• 3large onions (600 g), finely diced
• 6spring onions, sliced
• 100 gbeef fat or 4 tbsp oil
• 2 tbspsweet pimentón
• 1 tbspground cumin
• 1 tspchilli flakes (ají molido)
• 2 tspsalt
• 1 tspblack pepper
• 200 mlbeef stock

To fill

• 3hard-boiled eggs, chopped
• 100 ggreen olives, halved and stoned
• 1potato, boiled and diced (Salta style)

Directions

1. Rub the melted fat into the flour and salt, add the warm salted water and knead 5 minutes to a smooth, pliable dough. Wrap and rest 1 hour at room temperature; overworking makes it tough and hard to crimp.
2. Cut the beef by hand into small dice. This is the mark of a good empanada in Argentina, and mince gives a pasty, uniform filling that gives the game away.
3. Melt the beef fat in a wide pan, add the onions with a pinch of salt and cook gently for 20 minutes until completely soft and sweet but not browned.
4. Raise the heat, add the beef and sear it for 4–5 minutes only, just until it loses its raw colour. It finishes cooking inside the pastry.
5. Stir in the pimentón, cumin, chilli, salt and pepper off the heat so the paprika does not scorch, then add the stock and the spring onions and simmer 5 minutes.
6. Spread the filling in a tray and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight. Cold filling with set fat is essential: warm filling tears the dough and leaks in the oven.
7. Roll the dough 2–3 mm thick and cut 13 cm discs. Place a heaped tablespoon of cold filling on each with a piece of egg, an olive half and a little potato, brush the rim with water, fold into a half-moon and press out the air.
8. Seal with the repulgue, folding the edge over on itself in overlapping pleats from one corner to the other, about a dozen twists per empanada.
9. Brush with beaten egg and bake at 220°C (425°F) for 12–15 minutes, on a preheated tray, until the pastry is blistered and deep gold and the pleats are dark at the tips. Eat immediately, holding them upright so the juice does not run out.

Technique

• The filling must be juicy. Salteños judge an empanada by whether the first bite runs, which is why stock goes in and why the fat is beef fat, not oil: it sets solid when cold and melts to gravy in the oven.
• Grasa de pecho in the dough is what makes it short and savoury rather than flaky. Butter gives a completely different, more European pastry.
• The repulgue is not decoration; it is a seal, and different provinces have different counts of pleats. A pinched-and-forked edge will burst.
• Traditionally baked in a horno de barro, a domed clay oven, which is why the heat is high and the bake is short.

Substitutions

• No beef suet? Use lard, or a half-and-half mix of lard and butter, accepting a slightly less traditional flavour.
• For empanadas fritas, fry them in beef fat or oil at 180°C (350°F) for 3 minutes a side; use a dough with a little less fat so it blisters.

Variations

• Salteña, with hand-cut beef, potato, egg and olive, generally counted as the finest.
• Tucumana, juicier still and made with matambre, with no potato.
• Empanadas de humita, filled with creamed sweetcorn, and de carne cortada a cuchillo fried in the north.

History

Every province bakes its own, from Salta with potato to juicy Tucuman and Mendoza with olives; the filled pastry descends from Galician and Moorish baking.

Frequently asked questions

What is Empanadas?

Empanadas is a street food from Argentina: provincial turnovers of hand-cut beef, olive and egg; Salta’s are famed. Every province bakes its own, from Salta with potato to juicy Tucuman and Mendoza with olives; the filled pastry descends from Galician and Moorish baking.

How long does Empanadas take to make?

Empanadas takes 1 hr of preparation and 1 hr 30 min of cooking. The recipe makes 6 servings (18 empanadas). It is rated medium to make.

What can I substitute in Empanadas?

Yes, within limits. No beef suet? Use lard, or a half-and-half mix of lard and butter, accepting a slightly less traditional flavour. For empanadas fritas, fry them in beef fat or oil at 180°C (350°F) for 3 minutes a side; use a dough with a little less fat so it blisters.

What is the most important thing to get right in Empanadas?

Cut the beef by hand into small dice. This is the mark of a good empanada in Argentina, and mince gives a pasty, uniform filling that gives the game away.