Baked beef empanadas with salsa criolla
70 min · 52 g protein · 614 cals / serving
Argentina's favourite hand pie: a juicy filling of beef, sweet onion, red pepper, cumin and paprika with chopped egg and green olives, folded into tender pastry, crimped and baked golden. The dough is flour and Greek yogurt, so it rolls like a dream and needs no butter, and a sharp salsa criolla of tomato, onion and pepper cuts through every bite.
Ingredients
Dough
- 1 3/4 cups + 1 tbsp all-purpose flour, plus a little for rolling
- scant 1 cup nonfat Greek yogurt
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
Filling
- 1 tsp canola oil
- 2 large onions, finely chopped
- 1 small red bell pepper, finely chopped
- 1 1/3 lb ground beef (95% lean)
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tbsp paprika, sweet
- 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 green onions, sliced
- 2 eggs, hard-boiled and chopped
- 10 green olives, chopped
To bake
- 1/2 egg, beaten, to glaze
Salsa criolla
- 4 tomatoes, seeded and finely diced
- 1 small red onion, finely diced
- 1 small green pepper bell pepper, finely diced
- 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 1 tsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
Steps
- Mix the flour, baking powder and salt, add the yogurt and stir, then knead briefly into a soft, smooth dough, adding flour a spoon at a time until it is no longer tacky. Wrap and rest 20 minutes.
- Heat the oil in a nonstick pan over medium heat and soften the onion and red pepper for 8 minutes. Turn up the heat, add the beef and brown it, breaking it up, until no pink remains (160°F). Stir in the cumin, paprika, chilli, oregano and salt and cook 1 minute.
- Take the pan off the heat, stir in the green onion and let the filling cool completely; then fold in the chopped egg and olives. Cold filling keeps the dough from tearing.
- Heat the oven to 400°F and line a baking sheet. Divide the dough into 12 balls and roll each thinly on a floured board into a 6 inch round, about 2 mm thick. Put about 75 g (a heaped 1/3 cup) of filling on each, fold over, press the edges together and crimp by folding the edge over itself in little pleats, or press with a fork.
- Set the empanadas on the sheet, brush with the beaten egg and bake 20–25 minutes, until deep golden.
- Stir the tomato, red onion, green pepper, vinegar, oil, parsley and a pinch of salt together for the salsa criolla, and serve it with the hot empanadas, 3 per person.
Good to know
Can I freeze them?
Yes. Freeze them unbaked on a tray, then bag them. Bake from frozen at 400°F for 28–32 minutes, glazing just before they go in.
Will the yogurt dough taste like yogurt?
No. The tang bakes out and leaves a soft, slightly flaky crust, closer to a bread dough than to shortcrust. Roll it thin; it puffs a little in the oven.
Can I fry them instead?
You can, at 350°F for 3–4 minutes a side; they blister beautifully. They soak up about 100 g of oil between the twelve, and the score drops from about 55 to 40.
Alternative
Per
- Calories
- 122
- Protein
- (35%)
- 10 g
- Fat
- (26%)
- 3 g
- Carbohydrates
- (40%)
- 12 g
- of which sugar
- 3 g
- Fiber
- 1 g
- Sodium
- 236 mg
More meals
Computed from the ingredients with our published formula, not yet kitchen-tested. How
As written, 2455 kcal goes into the pot and 2371 g of ingredients comes out as about 2015 g of food: 122 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water and energy density is the score's biggest lever, so the dish is scored as cooked, not as an average of its parts. Every ingredient links to its food page, with the same data and score. The label's percentages are each macronutrient's share of the calories. The full formula.