Empanada de Pino

Hernández’s empanadas de pino bake a handmade dough around a beef-and-onion filling prepared the day before. The selected filling uses sweet paprika and cumin, with black olives, raisins and hard-boiled egg as optional additions.

Oil heats in a large pot and the selected ground beef browns for about eight minutes. Sweet paprika, salt, pepper and cumin cook with it briefly, then beef stock is added for thirty minutes of low cooking. Finely diced onion cooks in the filling for about thirty minutes more before flour is stirred in. The seasoning is checked and the filling cools and is refrigerated.

Milk, warm water and salt are stirred into a brine. In a large bowl, the dough flour is worked with two whole eggs using a wooden spoon, then warm melted vegetable shortening is added. The brine is incorporated during about ten minutes of hand kneading, until the dough is soft and elastic. Extra unsalted water and milk can be added if more moisture is needed.

The dough is divided into twenty portions and covered with a damp cloth. Each portion is rolled thin and cut into a circle, then filled with two tablespoons of pino and the selected optional egg quarter, olive and raisins. Milk wets the edge before it is pressed closed and folded. An egg-and-water wash is brushed over the empanadas.

The empanadas bake for thirty to thirty-five minutes until golden in the preheated oven. If they inflate, a toothpick can pierce them to release the trapped steam. They are served hot.