Empanada Dough

I have problems with pasta recipes that I pick up around here because they make an absurd amount of money and then I don’t know what to do with so much food, since there are only two of us here. And then when I came back from Argentina I missed it and wanted to do it, but I didn’t want to have to eat it empanadas all week, so I developed a small recipe for the dough, which you can double the ingredients as you need.

With the ingredients below you can make 4 medium empanadas or 8 small ones like mine.

Start by putting together:

• 3 tablespoons full of wheat flour;
• 1 tablespoon of cold butter, chopped into very small cubes;
• 1 pinch of salt;
• 1 spoon (coffee), a very small one, of baking powder;
• 3 tablespoons of hot water.

Mix everything until it becomes a uniform dough. You may need a little more water or flour. But it has to come away from your hands and form a ball. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

After this time, open it with a rolling pin and cut circles. Fill as desired and close like a pastry, in the shape of a half moon. If you don’t have skills, you can use a fork, just press it on the edges to seal the empanadas.

I suggest drier fillings like ground beef, chicken, spinach with ricotta, etc. I made it with several types of cheese and ricotta cream. Creamier fillings with a lot of cheese tend to leak in the oven when you don’t have much skill in closing the empanadas, so be careful with that!

Brush some egg yolk over the empanadas and bake in a preheated oven for 10 minutes at 180ºC. The baking time will depend on the size of your empanadas, as mine were small, they only lasted 20 minutes. When the surface is golden, you can take it out of the oven.

They were so cute!