Bocado de mano (hand-held bite, outside meal structure, at any hour)
Criollo Beef and Cumin Empanadas
Street foodDocumented🧂 🌶️moyen1 h 15
Small pastry turnovers filled with a hash of beef, melted onion, hard-boiled egg and olives, seasoned with cumin and sweet pimentón, folded into a repulgue (braided edge) and baked.
Bocado de mano (hand-held bite, outside meal structure, at any hour)
Small pastry turnovers filled with a hash of beef, melted onion, hard-boiled egg and olives, seasoned with cumin and sweet pimentón, folded into a repulgue (braided edge) and baked.
My dear ones, come closer. The empanada is the bread of the humble, and I come from the humble—never forget that. At home we chopped the meat with a knife, never a machine, and we packed the filling tight so no worker would go hungry halfway to the factory. The secret, here it is, I give it to you: a little cumin, a hint of pimentón, and the edge pinched thirteen times so it won't open in the oven. You eat them by hand, like brothers—that's the people at the table.
Ingredients
- •Wheat flour dough with lard — one family batch (envelope)
- •Beef chopped with a knife — a good portion (main filling)
- •Onions — abundant (melting base)
- •Cumin and sweet pimentón — a generous pinch (aromatic signature)
- •Hard-boiled eggs and green olives — a few (traditional garnish)
How it was made : In Argentina before the refrigerator, the filling was cooked the day before and then enclosed in the dough, which extended its preservation by a day—hence the success of the empanada as travel and construction site food. Each province had its own repulgue, a true visual signature of the cook.
Sources : Doña Petrona C. de Gandulfo, El libro de Doña Petrona (1934)