Easy Beef Empanadas Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Is it better to fry or bake empanadas? ›

Sometimes empanadas are fried, and sometimes they're baked. We love these baked empanadas for many reasons: Not only are they easier to cook, but they are also a healthier option. Bonus: you don't have to figure out what to do with a pot of hot frying oil when you're finished cooking.

Empanada dough is less flaky than pie crust (although you can substitute frozen pie crust dough in a pinch). It has a more tender texture that soaks up the filling without becoming soggy. This dough can be used for baked or fried empanadas, which are both great handheld dishes.

What Is An Empanada? Empanadas are crescent-shaped, savory pastries made of dough and filled with a variety of ingredients. Empanada filling varies greatly, and can include anything from beef, chicken, pork, tuna, shellfish, cheese, and / or vegetables, seasoned vibrantly, then baked or fried to perfection.

The best way to keep fried foods crispy? Just place them on a cooling rack set over a baking sheet. If you're frying multiple batches, throw the whole setup into a low oven to keep everything warm as you keep frying and adding to the rack.

Chilling both the filling and the dough will keep the liquid inside where it belongs and keep the edge sealed, preventing bursting and that dreaded soggy bottom.

And while we love traditional empanadas, fussy pastry dough is a lot to tackle on a busy weeknight. Here, we use our favorite dough hack, ready-made pizza dough, for a quick-ready-to-roll crust. It's crisp and tender and works perfectly to enclose the grass-fed ground beef, bell pepper, and golden raisin filling.

Adding a little vinegar to your dough will result in a tender, pliable, and flaky crust because it slightly inhibits gluten development, leading to a crust that is flakier and easier to work with. The great thing about vinegar is that you really only need a little bit of it to help your pie/empanada dough.

The Spanish recipe was made with bread dough, the Mexican recipe with corn masa dough. This is where Mexican empanada history takes over. Each region in Mexico has their own version of the empanada. Some regions use wheat flour, some use corn masa dough, some are deep fried some are baked.

As mentioned above many people will use their favorite pre-made pie dough to make empanadas. This is because the ingredients for most dough recipes are very similar. Most pie doughs use flour, butter, salt, water, and sometimes egg; an ingredient list almost identical to those needed for this recipe!

There's not a lot of difference — chief one being that you use ice water with empanada dough, and hot water for tortillas. Another difference is the flour.

Why does my empanada dough crack? ›

The main ingredients are water and corn flour. If you don't work quickly, the dough will dry out and start to crack.

The masa was quick and easy to make, and very forgiving to work with. Instead of rolling her dough, Gutierrez recommends using a tortilla press.

Baked empanadas are easier because you can bake a whole ton at once and certainly lighter without all that deep fried goodness but they don't have quite the same flavor as the fried version. So I leave it up to you! Don't skip the egg wash if baking because it is what helps give the empanadas their color!

The oxidised oils can cause many possible health problems including damage to the heart, kidney and lungs. Consuming oxidised oils can also lead to the increased risk of high blood pressure and atherosclerosis. As baking requires no addition of oils, it does not cause any oxidation.

While any type of cooking naturally reduces the nutrients in food, frying reduces the most nutrients while absorbing fat from the oil. Baking, however, enhances some nutrients and makes the protein in some foods easier to digest, making it a better and healthier way of cooking food than frying.

Greater nutrient retention: Unlike frying, baking is a preparation method that retains many nutrients commonly lost when cooking. There is better preservation of healthy vitamins and minerals while minimizing your chances of the bad ones, like aldehydes, which can result in foods fried at high temperatures.