A few people got crazy about empanadas this weekend, when the Amazing Race took contestants all the way down to
Thing is, people all the way up here in Seattle, find the 17 hour flight to Argentina for a dozen empanadas, a bit taxiing... so they asked me for my best empanadas recipe... I’ll do my best...
Let me start by saying my recipe varies a bit from my moms, because I cook with ingredients I find here in the Northwest.
So, here I go...
Ingredients
- Olive oil
- 1 small red onion, chopped
- 1 pound ground beef (15% fat)
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/4 cup raisins
- 1/2 cup pitted green olives, chopped
- 2 hard-cooked eggs, chopped
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 (12 sheets) package frozen empanadas sheets, thawed (you can get them at Mendoza’s Mexican Mercado or Mercado Latino in Pike Place Market
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).
- Brown the chopped onions in olive oil. Cook the onions until just before they begin to turn golden.
- Add the ground beef, salt, pepper and cumin and brown.
- Add the raisins, olives and hard boiled egg.
- Separate the pastry sheets.
- Place a spoonful of the meat mixture on each round.
- Avoid reaching the edges of the pastry with the filling because its oiliness will prevent good sealing. Slightly wet the edge of the pastry, fold in two and stick edges together. The shape should resemble that of a half-moon. You should have a 2/3 to 1/2 inch flat edge of pastry to work with. Seal by twisting edge, step by step, between thumb and index finger, making sure to add pressure before releasing the pinch and moving on to the next curl.
- Place empanadas on a spam sprayed sheet.
- Bake until golden, about 20 to 30 minutes.
Enjoy!
Oh, and here’s a video of how to seal them… Good luck with that ;-)
And speeding I was!
© 2012
