Easy Beef Empanadas Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Is it better to fry or bake empanadas? ›

Both cooking methods produce delicious empanadas. If you want a healthier merienda, bake them in the oven. If you're working with less time, frying them is the way to go. Try both and ask your loved ones to vote on their favorite.

As mentioned above many people will use their favorite pre-made pie dough to make empanadas. This is because the ingredients for most dough recipes are very similar. Most pie doughs use flour, butter, salt, water, and sometimes egg; an ingredient list almost identical to those needed for this recipe!

While pie dough is designed to be flaky, empanada dough is meant to be more tender. Pastry for empanadas has a higher flour-to-fat ratio, making it sturdy and perfect for wrapping around meaty fillings. Some recipes use lard or an additional egg as the fat source, but our recipe keeps it simple and easy with butter.

What Is An Empanada? Empanadas are crescent-shaped, savory pastries made of dough and filled with a variety of ingredients. Empanada filling varies greatly, and can include anything from beef, chicken, pork, tuna, shellfish, cheese, and / or vegetables, seasoned vibrantly, then baked or fried to perfection.

The best way to keep fried foods crispy? Just place them on a cooling rack set over a baking sheet. If you're frying multiple batches, throw the whole setup into a low oven to keep everything warm as you keep frying and adding to the rack.

What Can You Substitute for Empanada Dough? If you're looking for a shortcut, store-bought pie dough can be used to make empanadas. You may need to roll the dough out slightly thinner—it will produce a flakier result than typical empanada dough and is better for baking than frying.

And while we love traditional empanadas, fussy pastry dough is a lot to tackle on a busy weeknight. Here, we use our favorite dough hack, ready-made pizza dough, for a quick-ready-to-roll crust. It's crisp and tender and works perfectly to enclose the grass-fed ground beef, bell pepper, and golden raisin filling.

Adding a little vinegar to your dough will result in a tender, pliable, and flaky crust because it slightly inhibits gluten development, leading to a crust that is flakier and easier to work with. The great thing about vinegar is that you really only need a little bit of it to help your pie/empanada dough.

The Spanish recipe was made with bread dough, the Mexican recipe with corn masa dough. This is where Mexican empanada history takes over. Each region in Mexico has their own version of the empanada. Some regions use wheat flour, some use corn masa dough, some are deep fried some are baked.

Discover a World of Empanadas! Here's a delicious, flaky wrapper that's perfect for capturing all your favorite flavors: GOYA® Empanada Dough. Our line of ready-to-use flour dough discs are the #1 ingredient for preparing a wide variety of empanadas, a favorite in Latin America and around the world.

What is the fancy name for empanadas? ›

These are a few of the known names: Meat Pies (American) Empanadas (Latin/Spanish) Pastelillos (Latin/Spanish)

Sugar – Yes we need some sugar in this recipe. I used brown sugar today as the molasses notes cooks down and add complexity to our dish. Puff pastry – Believe me you'll want to use store bought for this recipe, it'll save you time and energy. Egg – We're using an entire egg for an egg wash to top our Beef Empanadas.

The main ingredients are water and corn flour. If you don't work quickly, the dough will dry out and start to crack.

The best empanadas have a rich, moist filling that contrasts with the baked dough exterior. The moisture in the filling comes to a simmer in the oven, expanding as it heats. If the filling expands too much, it can push through the sealed edge of the empanada.

While any type of cooking naturally reduces the nutrients in food, frying reduces the most nutrients while absorbing fat from the oil. Baking, however, enhances some nutrients and makes the protein in some foods easier to digest, making it a better and healthier way of cooking food than frying.

Baking removes the concern of adding extra fats since it doesn't require oil or grease to cook the fish. There is another unique benefit to baking over frying. Since frying, both deep-frying and pan-frying alike, use higher temperatures than baking, there is some loss of important nutrients.

These classic Argentinean empanadas are filled with chicken, chorizo, onions, garlic, paprika, chopped GOYA® Manzanilla Olives Stuffed with Minced Pimientos and raisins. And following the Argentinean tradition, they're baked instead of fried! Make them in a snap with GOYA® Empanada Dough-Puff Pastry for Baking.

Chilling both the filling and the dough will keep the liquid inside where it belongs and keep the edge sealed, preventing bursting and that dreaded soggy bottom.