Empanadas Argentinas

So, you guys may not know, but me and husband are going to Argentina! We'll be there overt the first week of march! 9 days of travel! I could not be more excited!

Husband travels a lot because of work, but we don't get to travel a lot togethr, and this is gonna be our first trip together thie year! So, Yey!!

I was thinking, what better way to celebrate this trip than cooking argentinian food!

And what better than Empanadas! Although I have to admit that the first time I had Empanadas were in Chile, I've never been in Argentina before. In Chile they had a type of savory pastry. Filled with seared meat, saute onions, green olives and hard boiled eggs. They were called Empanada de Pino. Delicious! Everything was an excuse to have Empanadas, and I decided to bake them home for this Argentine Special!

Boy, if I knew it would be that easy, and that tasty, I would be doing this ages ago!

Meat Argentine Empanadas

Materials

Dough

2 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup warm water
1 teaspoon salt

Filling

350g meat chopped in bits
1/2 shalot
1/2 yellow onion
2 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons of butter
spicy paprika
pepper
salt
4 tablespoons chive
50 g green olive
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons flour
2 eggs
1 egg yolk


Methods

• Mix the flour, salt  and butter untill well incorporated. Add the water and mix well until a smooth dough. Cover with plastic and let it rest while you prepare the filling
• Boil water to hard boil the eggs
• Chop the garlic, shalots and onion. Saute in butter untill brown and soft.
• Stir in the meat and fry well until brown. Season with pepper, salt and paprika
• Add the chopped chives and green olives and mix.
• Add the water and flour and mix until start geting thick
• Slice the hard boiled eggs and and roughly smash it with a fork.
• Open the dough in a floured surface. Cut in circles of 10 cm of diameter. You gonna get around 10 of them.
• You can put up to 1 1/2 spoons of the meat filling and top with 1 spoon of eggs.
• Wet the edges of the circles and close. Spread egg yolk on top of it and bake at 180ºC until golden brown.

Experimental observations

You can also make Empanadas filled with cheese. But this meat one is classic, and that's what I was going for.

You want to really fiil the pastry, tastes really rich and meaty like this!

If you have some leftover of the filling, save it to make a sandwich! Or eat straight from the pan... Like I, not proudly, did.