If you really know me, you are aware about my passion for South America and the people who live there; in all my travels in the continent I met a lot of passionate, welcoming, dreamers and always fun guys, with an innate attitude to enjoy the life anyway and anywhere.

Argentina is one of the best places I’ve ever visited and I had the chance to enjoy Buenos Aires for a few months during one of my previous life.

It’s useless to say how fantastic the food is there, especially the parillada in all its shapes, but today I want to speak about my favorite street food; similar to the Italian panzerotti, it’s one of the classical dishes of Argentina and the entire Spanish South America……and you will see that it is also easy to be prepared!

Let’s have a look here…..

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Ingredients:

• 300gr of flour 00
• 2 egg (only the red part)
• 50gr of butter
• 2 tea spoon of salt
• 85ml of water
• 2 spoons of olives oil
• 1 spoon of sugar

Filling:

• 300gr of beef minced meat
• 1 sweet pepper (I prefer the red, but you can also use the yellow and mix)
• 1 red onion
• 1 clove of garlic
• Dried herbs as per your taste (I use origan, mint and thyme)
• Dried chili pepper
• Salt, pepper and olives oil

How to do it:

• Prepare your kitchen robot with the dough hook
• In your kitchen robot mix the flour, sugar and salt, slowly knead
• Add the red egg and continue knead
• Gently add water and oil to the flours while the robot is slowly kneading
• After a couple of minutes, slowly add the oil to the mixture and continue to knead for at least 5-6 minutes increasing a little bit the speed.(with my KitchenAid I normally start at 1, I add the oil at 2 and I finish the kneading at 3 for few minutes)

• Once completed, move the mixture to your kitchen table and continue to knead with your hands for a couple of minutes; shape the kneading as a ball
• Move the kneading in a cup, close the cup with kitchen film and let the dough rest in the fridge for 45 minutes
• Prepare the filling
  • In a pan add a line of oil and let it warm up
  • Cut the onions cut in big slices and add them to the pan with the smashed garlic and the chili pepper (I would start with a tea spoon, based on how hot it is)
  • Once the onion is softened (but not burned yet), add the meat
  • Cut the sweet pepper in small pieces
  • After few minutes, once the meat changed color, add the sweet peppers in the pan
  • Add salt, pepper and herbs as you like it and let it cook for about 15 minutes
  • Once it is ready, let it cool down in the pan, far from the fire
• Take the dough out of the fridge and stretch it on your kitchen table with a rolling pin; don’t make it too much thin or it will break when you cook it
• Cut come circle big as your hand
• Put the filling to the center of each circle and close them up shaping them as you prefer; normally I prepare them as half-moon and I close them twisting the edge
• If you have problems closing them, here 2 suggestions:
  • Start using little filling especially if you are not good with your hands J
  • Wet the edges with a drop of water to better close the empanadas
• Move the empanadas in a tray with baking paper
• Wet them with the red eggs and then cook them in hoven, not ventilated mode, at 200C for 20 minutes
• Buen provecho!