South American Cuisine

Empanadas

Cuisine: South American Created by Yvonne Cutro

Debate rages over which country invented the empanada, and varieties using different sorts of pastry abound. They are the ultimate snack food. They can be filled with cheese and chilli or meat, tuna, prawns or vegetables, egg and olives, or a combination. Some are baked, while others are deep fried.

Ingredients

1 kilo of minced beef (choose mince that includes some meat fat)
180-200g chopped shallots
180-200g brown onions
½ teaspoon aji (dried type of chilli capsicums)
3 tbsp of vegetable oil
130g of butter
130g sultanas
3 tbsp white sugar
Salt to taste
250 beef stock (hot to seal the beef mince)
3 hard-boiled eggs in pieces
Handful of green olives
1 tsp of sweet paprika
¾ tsp of ground cumin
½ tsp of ground cloves (optional)
1 kilo short crust pastry

View Conversion table

Preparation

Put oil and butter in a large frying pan on medium heat. Add the onions and shallots and cook until the onions are translucent (not brown). Add a sprinkle of aji. Then add minced beef and brown. Pour on warm stock until all ingredients are cooked through. Season the mix with salt and sugar. Then add sweet paprika, a little water, cinnamon and cloves. Reduce the mixture over low heat and when ready, remove from heat and allow to cool.

Take balls of pastry about the size of a golf ball. Roll out each ball into a circle about 10-15cm in diameter and lightly flour.

In the centre of each round, add a generous spoonful of cooled meat filling, chopped stuffed green olives, a few sultanas and some roughly chopped hard boiled egg then a sprinkle of cumin.

Fold over and crimp the edges to secure the filling.

Brush the empanadas with melted butter. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200C for 25 minutes or until golden.

South American Restaurants

Displaying 10 of 42 South American Restaurants.

Restaurant		Suburb
1.	Sporting Club Hotel	Brunswick
2.	Brazilian Touch Restaurant & Bar	Milton
3.	Enris Restaurant	Hawthorn
4.	BlueFire Churrascaria Grill & Bar	Docklands
5.	Bodega	Surry Hills
6.	El Gaucho	Fitzroy North
7.	Favela	Potts Point
8.	Fiesta on Oxford	Bondi Junction
9.	Churrasco	Coogee
10.	LuLo	Hawthorn

25 Mar 2012 09:25 AEST

Gabriela

Cecil Hills

Short crust pastry for empanadas

Does anyone have the recipe for the short crust pastry please? Thank you

20 May 2009 02:21 AEST

Jen

Melbourne

Recipe is not vegetarian!!

I am wondering why this recipe is in the vegetarian section when it has minced beef in it?!?

25 Apr 2009 06:39 AEST

georgie

yeppoon

vegetarian?

This is an interesting vegetarian recipe! It looks amazing and luckily I can try it as I am not vegetarian, just trying to cut back on meat.

24 Apr 2009 02:35 AEST

Gabriel

Mosman

Skip the Shallots

I've never heard of shallots in empanadas so I would just increase the amount of onions by the same amount. Try also increasing the amount of praprika used, however just be sure that its sweet. I would also skip the sultanas as I've never really liked them in empanadas. As there are so many recipies of empanadas throughout South America, there is never a right or wrong way. So be creative and make your own variations to taste.

29 Mar 2009 09:31 AEST

Eric

Gumdale, Qld

Hoping to clear up confusion over "shallots"

The terms used for the "members of the onion family" is confusing; I believe Australians call the long green onion stem (kind of like a baby leek) "shallots", the long green onion with a white bulb at the end "spring onions" and the small brown skinned onions (that peel apart like cloves of garlic) "eschalots" (more commonly known as "french shallots"). Please correct me if I'm wrong. PS. I have not tried the recipe but it sounds delicious!

19 Mar 2009 02:00 AEST

Rosa Pabon

Greenfield Park

Shallots and ingredients

In Mendoza Argentina, sometimes we used some shallots as well, but empanada's recipes vary from one province to another. And also they are different recipe in each country that makes them. To Greg I can tell on the video that they are shallots not spring onions.

02 Feb 2009 12:36 AEST

Sergio

Alexandria

Shallots, Onions

Ive never heard of shallots in the Pino mix before, just use the brown onion.

27 Dec 2008 04:33 AEST

Greg Lehey

No suburb, just Dereel

So what are the ingredients?

This recipe wants 180-200g chopped shallots. But what are they? Real shallots or spring onions? Since the Australian foodstuff industry has unilaterally redefined so many terms, it would help to be more explicit.

Comment on this recipe

PLEASE NOTE: All submitted comments become the property of SBS. We reserve the right to edit and/or amend submitted comments. HTML tags other than paragraph, line break, bold or italics will be removed from your comment.