Pumpkin Empanadas (2024)

FAQs

What are pumpkin empanadas made of? ›

Make filling: Mix together pumpkin, sugar, eggs, cinnamon, salt, ginger, and cloves in a large bowl until smooth. Roll each dough ball out on a floured surface into a thin, 6-inch circle. Spoon about 1/3 cup filling into the center of each dough circle.

Argentine empanadas with beef, cheese, or chicken. Chilean empanadas with beef, cheese, or seafood. Mexican empanadas with spicy beef, potato, or pumpkin.

Both cooking methods produce delicious empanadas. If you want a healthier merienda, bake them in the oven. If you're working with less time, frying them is the way to go. Try both and ask your loved ones to vote on their favorite.

Empanada dough is a type of shortcrust pastry. It's buttery and flaky, similar to the pastry used for pies like pumpkin pie, apple pie etc, but it's not sweet. You will love how it's so easy to work with. It's easier to work with than store bought puff pastry!

While pie dough is designed to be flaky, empanada dough is meant to be more tender. Pastry for empanadas has a higher flour-to-fat ratio, making it sturdy and perfect for wrapping around meaty fillings. Some recipes use lard or an additional egg as the fat source, but our recipe keeps it simple and easy with butter.

While it's quite tasty, it isn't the healthiest meal you can consume. The great news is you can still get your empanada fix with all the flavor, but less calories, fat, and more nutrition with healthier versions.

What Can You Substitute for Empanada Dough? If you're looking for a shortcut, store-bought pie dough can be used to make empanadas. You may need to roll the dough out slightly thinner—it will produce a flakier result than typical empanada dough and is better for baking than frying.

For instance, Americans call them meat pies, and Jamaicans call them beef patties. At the same time, Indians call them samosas, and people in Latin America or Spain call them pastelillos or pastelitos.

These are a few of the known names: Meat Pies (American) Empanadas (Latin/Spanish) Pastelillos (Latin/Spanish)

Easily prepare them with a delicious filling of GOYA® Black Beans, GOYA® Whole Kernel Golden Corn, spices, and the rich flavor of GOYA® Queso Blanco cheese, all wrapped in convenient GOYA® Empanada Dough-Puff Pastry for Baking. Bake them in the oven for just a few minutes, and they'll be ready to enjoy!

What oil is best for frying empanadas? ›

Oil that is too cool will make your fried empanadas greasy and sad. I normally use canola oil for fried empanadas because it's flavorless and has a high smoke point. Lard tastes better, but you end up frying very close to lard's smoke point, which is tricky; when oil gets too hot it will taste acrid.

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.

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.

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.

Spanish colonizers introduced traditional empanadas to the new world in the 16th century. Empanadas have their origin in the Spanish action Empanar connoting “wrap in bread.” Traditional empanadas hence are simply beef stuffing wrapped in pastry dough. Beef empanadas are small palm-sized meat pockets.

An empanada is a type of baked or fried turnover consisting of pastry and filling, common in Spain, other Southern European, Latin American countries, and the Philippines. The name comes from the Spanish empanar (to bread, i.e., to coat with bread)and translates as 'breaded', that is, wrapped or coated in bread.

Empanadas, whose stuffing, manufacture and types are numerous and varied, differ from traditional dumplings in that they are deep fried, steamed, or baked, and excess dough is not cut off.

Fried Pies are Similar to Empanadas

The difference is that empanadas can be sweet or savory, fried or baked. Fried pies are always sweet desserts. There can be slight variations in pastry, however. Empanadas can be flaky and tender, or crispy.