Chicken Empanadas
I'm showing you how to make what is one of the world's greatest meat-filled pastries. Or, it can be, if you avoid the three most common mistakes: empanadas that are under-seasoned, under-filled, and under-cooked. But, if you use the following technique, you'll avoid all of those issues, no matter what kind of filling you use!
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Recipe Summary
It's always a great feeling when a recipe comes out well, but there's a little extra satisfaction involved when it's something that's usually fried, and we've been able to successfully pull it off in the oven. These chicken empanadas were a perfect example. Despite not firing up the deep fryer, they were crispy, flaky, and baked up to a beautiful golden brown.
So, the packaging was great, but that's only half the battle. To make a truly great empanada we need a very flavorful filling, which I think we accomplished here, plus we want a lot of it. By weight, these empanadas have twice as much chicken mixture as crust, which I think is the perfect ratio. To accomplish this, we really need to push the envelope when we…stuff the "envelope." As long as you can seal these up, they can't have too much stuffing.
And yes, that means you may get some juices bubbling out of the seams towards the end of the baking, but this shouldn't be an issue, since our filling is so moist that there's very little chance of things drying out. Speaking of not dry, I'd like to think these are perfectly fine to eat by themselves, but if you were to mix fresh lime juice and cilantro into some sour cream, you'd have a fast and easy dip that I thought worked really well. Either way, I really do hope you give these a try soon.
Ingredients
Directions
Chef's Note:
You can use regular oregano instead of Mexican oregano.