Chicken and Chorizo Empanadas

I felt like doing something I hadn’t done before for dinner the other night and happened across a recipe for tuna empanadas in my massive folder of recipes :). They sounded yummy, but I decided to change the filling to chicken and chorizo 🙂

You will need:

> Large saucepan or wok
> Pastry brush
> Cling film
> 9cm cookie cutter
> Rolling pin

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Filling makes about 9 empanadas

Ingredients for pastry:

> 3 1/4 cups plain flour, plus extra to dust
> 1/2tsp salt
> 6tbsp cold butter
> 2 eggs, beaten
> About 8 tbsp cold water
> 1 extra egg, beaten for glazing the empanadas before baking.
> Little bit of water for brushing around the pastry when you assemble later on.

Ingredients for filling:

> 1 chicken breast
> 60g chorizo
> 1 onion, finely chopped
> 1/2 can chopped tomatoes
> 2 good squeezes of tomato purée
> 1tbsp olive oil
> Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

> First we need to make the pastry. I made these in advance so the pastry had lots of time to rest and chill in the fridge. Place the flour, salt and butter in a large bowl and rub together until it looks like breadcrumbs
> Place the 2 eggs in a cup and beat together with 2tbsp of water. Place this into the bowl with the flour and butter mixture.
> Using a wooden spoon, mix in the egg. At this stage it will be very dry and flaky. Now you need to add in the water 1tbsp at a time as you may not need 8tbsp. It depends on your flour, mine was quite dry so I needed 8. Continue mixing until a dough forms and then bring the dough together with your hands.
> Knead the dough briefly and then wrap it in cling film. Place it in the fridge for a minimum of 30 minutes. I left mine in all afternoon and took it out an hour before I needed it.
> Now for the filling. Slice the onion finely. Heat up the oil in a wok or large saucepan on a medium to high heat. As this heats up slice the chicken breast and chorizo finely.
> Fry the onions for a few minutes until browned and soft.
> Add in the chicken breast and cook for a few minutes until browned off. When the chicken is browned off add in the chorizo.
> Add in the chopped tomatoes and stir.

> Add in the tomato purée and then season to taste. Turn the heat down and leave to simmer for about 10 minutes until nice and thick and the chicken is cooked through.
> Leave to cool and then place it in a glass bowl to cool completely.
> When the filling is cooled completely you can assemble your empanadas. It’s best to make the empanadas when you need them because if the filling is left in the pastry too long without cooking it will go soggy. I took the pastry out of the fridge and hour before I needed it to warm up a bit.

> Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C and line a baking tray.
> Flour the work surface and roll out your pastry to about 50mm thick.
> Cut out 9 circles with the cookie cutter.

> I ended up with left over pastry as my filling was enough for 9 empanadas. I just cooked this as my boyfriend really likes plain pastry! Alternatively you could freeze it and then use it as a pie topper as there was quite a bit left.
> Now I’m fairly sure that traditionally the empanadas are supposed to be very small with not a lot of filling, but I wanted to make them bigger with more filling as I hate it when there’s a filling shortage.
> After cutting out the circles I then went over them with the rolling pin again to make them bigger. Probably ended up about 20mm thick.
> I also found after making a few it was better to roll them more into ovals than circles as it meant you could get more filling in and fold the pastry over.
> Using two spoons place some filling in the centre of the pastry.

> Brush a bit of water around the edge and then bring the top of the pastry down over the bottom to make semi circles.
> Using a fork, gently press the edges down to create a seal.

> Repeat this until you’ve made all your empanadas.
> Using the beaten egg, brush over the empanadas to glaze.
> Place in the oven and bake for about 15 minutes until golden brown and piping hot inside.
> Serve with potato wedges, (My recipe can be found here) on a bed of rice, or with salad.
> Enjoy 🙂