I’m afraid to confess that I did NOT appreciate the raisins and therefore would scrape a portion of the filling out while eating the entire crust in one sitting–sorry mom! Now that I’m an adult, I made my own beef empanada recipe sans raisins that still brings to mind memories of my mom.
Background
The name empanadas comes from the word “empanar” meaning to wrap or coat in bread. Empanadas came to the Philippines by way of Spanish colonization and now have a lot of different variations. Interestingly, many Filipino empanadas are most similar to the Cuban picadillo because of its slight sweetness (Filipinos like their sweet, look at our pork bbq skewers!). In general, they are a hand pie like pâté chaud. You can find empanadas baked or fried to a golden brown crisp. Some traditional ingredients include beef, chicken, seafood, and many different vegetables ranging from carrots to eggplants to potatoes which extends the filling. Philippine empanadas don’t stop at savory, but also include many sweet dessert empanadas like the Cebuano sinudlan empanada, which has a sweet coconut center. You can regularly find them at your local Filipino bakery or grocery store, but since I am super picky about my empanada filling, I kept this recipe simple and used ground beef, carrots, tomato sauce, peas, and potatoes. I added a small amount of sugar into both the filling and crust to bring a sweetness to the empanada–you won’t think twice about missing those raisins. This simple recipe is a good place to start for customizing your own filling ingredients.
Cooking tips
Serve & storing
Serve these warm off the cooling rack to prevent mouths from getting burned. (Take it from someone with this unfortunate experience). After cooling, you can store them in an airtight container in the fridge for up to one week. To reheat, just put them in your toaster oven until they’re heated all the way through
