At Christmas dinner parties, you can taste the spicy meat pies, empanadas, familiar from Spanish and South American kitchens.
Empanadas are the perfect treat for Christmas parties, for example. Wind Lindgren
You can practically put almost anything inside empanadas, so pasties are a great way to use leftovers in the fridge and avoid food waste.
For empanadas, use, for example, crushed peppers and tomatoes, cheese purslane or the rest of sour cream and crème fraîche jars. Olives also go well between empanadas.
In these empanadas, the minced meat filling gets a little kick from the cream cheese seasoned with jalapeno. Other flavors can also be used as fresh cheese. Try, for example, cream cheese seasoned with sun-dried tomatoes or red chili.
Minced meat, on the other hand, can be replaced with vegetable proteins, such as beef, so a vegetarian version of empanadas is created without extra effort.
Empanadas
Dough:
6 dl wheat flour
75 g of butter
1 dl of milk
1 egg
1 egg for lubrication
Filling:
300 g ground beef
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
1 tablespoon of tomato puree
0.5 tsp of salt
1 tsp smoked paprika powder
3 tablespoons of cream cheese seasoned with jalapeno (e.g. Arla Lempi)
1. Start by preparing the filling. Brown the minced meat in a pan with chopped onion and garlic.
2. Add spices, tomato puree and finally cream cheese. Stir and let it simmer for a while longer.
3. Make the dough while the filling cools. Mix all the dough ingredients in a bowl into a smooth dough and shape the dough into a ball by hand.
4. Divide the dough into two parts and roll the balls into thin plates. Cut circles out of the dough using a large mug and put the filling in the middle of the circles. Fold into a half-moon shape and pinch the edges carefully.
5. Repeat the same until all the dough is used.
6. Brush the empanadas with egg and bake at 200 degrees for about 25 minutes.
Wine recommendation
Try the Hahn Pinot Noir 2021 wine (€19.89) with the empanadas, the grapes of which have grown in the Arroyo Seco region of Monterey, next to the Santa Lucia mountain range. Hahn Pinot Noir is a combination of fresh berry, intense and juicy taste, which is combined with the toastiness and chocolate brought by the oak.
Tuuli’s kitchen tests the most popular recipes and cooks easy delicacies for everyday life and parties.