Empanada Dough
Ingredients
2 ¼ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes (optional use same amount of shortening)
1 large egg
½ cup ice water
1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar
Preparation
Sift flour with salt into a large bowl and blend in butter with your fingertips or a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal with some (rough pea-size) butter lumps.
Beat together egg, water, and vinegar into a small bowl with a fork. Add to flour mixture, stirring with fork until just incorporated. (mixture will look shaggy.)
Turn out mixture onto a lightly floured surface and gather together, then knead gently with heel of your hand once or twice, just enough to bring dough together.
Form dough into a thin rectangle sheet and chill, wrapped in plastic wrap, at least 1 hour.
cut into 4.5 inch round disks (use round mold or small plates). Makes approximately 12 disks. Cooks' note: dough can be chilled up to 6 hours.
Empanada Meat Filling (Picadillo)
Ingredients
2x (2 parts onions)
1x (1 part ground beef) plus Full Olive Empanada Seasoning and that is it!
Below would be for about 24 empanadas
2x (2 lbs yellow onions – sliced thin)
1x (1lb of Ground Beef 80/20 fat content)
3 tablespoons of Full Olive Empanada Seasoning
Instructions
In a sauté pan, heat the olive oil on medium heat adding chopped onions. Cook the onions until they begin to turn golden. Remove from the heat and stir in Empanada Seasoning
With the pan on low heat, add the ground beef and stir until the beef is well incorporated into the onions.
Remove beef and onion mixture from pan and place in a storage container and refrigerate until cool.
Making the Empanadas
Ingredients
3 large hard boiled eggs - cut into eighths
12 pimento stuffed green olives - cut in half
24 empanada discs
Meat filling (Picadillo)
One egg with teaspoon of water to create an egg wash for glazing
Preparation
Place a spoonful of the meat mixture on each round
add a piece of hard boiled egg and a piece of olive
avoid reaching the edges of the pastry with the filling because its oiliness will prevent good sealing.
slightly wet the edge of the pastry, fold in two, and stick edges together. The shape should resemble that of a half-moon.
You should have a 2/3 to 1/2 inch flat edge of pastry to work with. Seal by twisting edge, step by step, between thumb and index finger, making sure to add pressure before releasing the pinch and moving on to the next curl.
Other sealing procedures like pinching without curling or using a fork to seal will not prevent juice leaks during baking, and empanadas must be juicy.
Cook
Preheat over to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C)
Place empanadas on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Be sure to prick each empanada with a fork hear the curl to allow steam to escape during baking.
Glaze with egg for sine and bake until golden, about 20-30 minutes.
