Argentina · Plate 02 of 10
Empanadas Argentinas
Hand-chopped beef, cumin, and a folded edge that every province claims to do better. The Salta-style baked version.
- Prep
- 45 min
- Cook
- 25 min
- Serves
- 12 empanadas
- Difficulty
- Medium
The single most argued-about food in Argentina. Every province has a shape, a filling, and a strong opinion about everyone else’s. Salta chops the beef by hand and bakes it. Tucumán fries. Mendoza adds more onion than you think is reasonable and is right about it.
This is the Salta-style baked version, which is the one most people outside the country picture. The crimped edge is called the repulgue, and in some places the pattern tells you what’s inside.
- 500 g1 lbbeef chuckhand-chopped into 5 mm dice, not ground
- 2 large2 largeonionsfinely diced
- 22spring onionssliced thin
- 2 tsp2 tspsweet paprika
- 2 tsp2 tspground cumin
- 1 tsp1 tspred pepper flakes
- 60 g¼ cupbeef fat or lardbutter works, but it is not the same
- 33hard-boiled eggsroughly chopped
- 80 g½ cupgreen olivespitted, halved
- 1212empanada discs12 cm / 5 in, thawed if frozen
- 11eggbeaten, for the wash
Method
Melt the fat in a wide pan over medium heat. Cook the onions with a good pinch of salt until soft and translucent, about 10 minutes. Do not brown them.
Add the paprika, cumin, and pepper flakes and stir for 30 seconds until they smell toasted.
Turn the heat up, add the beef, and cook just until it loses its raw colour — 3 to 4 minutes. It should still be juicy. It will finish cooking in the oven.
Take the pan off the heat, stir in the spring onions, and taste for salt. Be aggressive here; the pastry is bland and will mute it.
Spread the filling on a tray and refrigerate until cold, at least 2 hours or overnight. Warm filling tears the dough and steams the pastry from the inside.
Heat the oven to 220°C / 425°F. Lay out the discs. Put a heaped tablespoon of cold filling in the centre of each, then a piece of egg and two olive halves.
Wet the rim of the disc with water, fold it over, and press out the air as you seal. Air is what makes them burst.
Crimp the edge — the repulgue. Fold a corner over, then keep folding the sealed rim back on itself in overlapping pleats. It takes a few to get right and the ugly ones taste identical.
Brush with beaten egg and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until deep golden. Eat within ten minutes of them coming out.
What I learned
- Chopping the beef by hand instead of using ground beef is the whole difference. Ground beef gives you a mince pie; chopped beef gives you texture.
- The filling must be properly cold. My first batch was warm and half of them split open in the oven.
- Salta bakes them; Tucumán and much of the north fry them. Both are correct and people will tell you otherwise.