Empanadas From Luis

A couple of years ago my oldest son loved watching Noggin, a television program for kids. One of his favorite shows was 'Cooking with Luis'.

Luis would go grocery shopping for his ingredients with his mom, then also with the help from his mom would make a dish following a recipe. This program got my oldest son so excited to cook. We went online and printed off all of his recipes from Noggin.com and started to make them together.

One of the recipes was this one, Empanadas. I have to be honest with you I was a little hesitant when I saw the list of ingredients. However, we made them together my son and I, and they turned out far better than I ever thought they would. These Empanadas are Delicious! My kids LOVE them and eat two each. We have now made them many times since and love them each time. They never get old.
I hope you give them a try, you will love them.

Empanadas from Luis
Makes 8

What you need:

1 Red Pepper, chopped
1 tablespoon Olive Oil
1 White Onion, chopped
1 pound of ground meat (Beef, Turkey, Pork, or Chicken)
4 Hardboiled Eggs, chopped
1 cup Spanish Olives OR Manzanilla Olives stuffed with Pimentos, minced
Salt & Pepper
1 teaspoon Cumin
Pastry Dough (I used Pillsbury Refrigerator)
1 Egg Yolk (raw)

How to Make:

1. Heat oil in a pan, when the oil is hot, add the red peppers and onions. Stir them around for 5 minutes. Now, slowly add the meat, and mix it all together. Make sure you don’t overcook the meat.

2. Now chop 4 eggs into bits. Stir the eggs into the meat. Pour it all into a big bowl.

3. Chop up the olives and add them to the mixture. Sprinkle a bit of pepper and a pinch of salt. Now add Cumin. Cumin gives the empanadas their special taste.

Pastry
On a dry table, with dry hands, roll out your pie crust. If using Pillsbury refrigerator dough, unroll both pie rounds from package. Now I used a regular table bowl for my 'dough cutter' to get the perfect round circle. You should be able to get 8 small circles out of the dough. You will have to re-roll the dough out a few times just like you would cookie dough.

Filling
Add some of the warm filling to the middle of a pastry circle. Fold it over all the way so the edges touch. For a perfect empanada, use a fork to make marks around the edges. Do the same for all the empanadas and put them on a baking sheet.

Bake

To make them golden brown, paint them with an egg yolk.
Cook at 350º F (180º C) and cook for 35 minutes.

We like to eat ours with Salsa on top.

Yummy! :-)