How to Make Southwest Beef Empanadas

-Hey everyone, I'm Judith with recipe.com. Today, I'm gonna be showing you how to make Southwest Beef Empanadas, a really delicious snack or appetizer at any party. So, what you gonna need for this is 1 pound of ground beef, 4-1/2 cups of pancake mix, 2/3 cup of water, 1 cup of boiling water, 1 package of taco seasoning, 1 tablespoon of dried minced onion, 1 can of sliced carrots, and 1 cup of refrigerated hash brown. We preheated our oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, but let first of all get or skillet ingredients going. So, we got a large skillet here. We're gonna put it to a medium heat, and we just wanna put in our ground beef to get it nice and brown. So, we'll just break that apart a little, and we'll brown the beef for about 5 to 7 minutes. Well, our ground beef is brown nicely, cook all they way through. So, now it's time to add in some of our other ingredients. So, our 2/3 cup of water goes in there, not the boiling water. Our taco seasoning also goes in and before we add in all these ingredients, don't forget to drain any excess fat, which we did before. Our potatoes and veggies go in there. Throw the carrots in there too. It's gonna give them nice color and just a really great filling for empanadas and our dried onion of course. So, we gonna give that a good stir, got everything together, and we're gonna reduced this heat to medium, and we're gonna cook for another 5 minutes. So, now it's time to make our dough, which is gonna be the outside of our empanada. Now, for all those who don't know what an empanada is, it's basically a pastry or a dough, which is folded in half with a filling inside, and the filling can vary. Obviously here, we're doing a nice beef and vegetable filling, but they can vary to eggs, ham, and cheese, depending on which country you are in actually. They really do vary. They use a lot in Latin America or in southern Europe, and today, we're making a creole cuisine kind of empanada, a southwestern one. So, we're gonna sprinkle some of our pancake mix onto the board so it's gonna help us when we knead it, and we're gonna put the rest into a large bowl with our boiling water. So, this mix up a little bit, but we're gonna use our hands in as second and to form a nice dough. We got a nice consistency. This is actually one of my favorite, favorite snacks to eat. Contrary to the accent that you hear, I am half Latin, and these are really staple in the Latin diet, in South America, particularly Paraguay where I'm from and Argentina too. They ate it almost daily as a snack or as an appetizer just to keep them going throughout the day. So, that dough is pouring, so we're just gonna transfer it onto our board, and we're just gonna knead it with our hands about 2 times just to get all formed. So, once that is done, we want to get about 6 folds from this dough, so you can just take, break it up, take it with your hands, we're just gonna form our dough into 6 balls. So, we have the balls prepared. We wanna roll this out so it gets nice and flat about 7 inches length way. So, we got a rolling pin or a nice bottle of wine as we do, and we'll just gonna roll it flat. So, now, our dough is flattened out, it's time to put in our filling. So, our meat is brown nicely. Our veggies are nice and tender, so we can just put them in there in the middle. Mix sure not overpack your empanada. You just want just small amount, the right size filling, so our empanada doesn't burst when it's expanding in the oven. Now, with some water, you can just get your fingertips and spread around the edges of your dough and that's gonna help our empanada to seal nicely. So, and then we're just gonna fold, so as delicately as you can, have a nice fold in there. You can indent it a little bit with your fingers. There we go. That is looking good. What I like to do is get your fork, make a nice pretty pattern around the edge like so. We're just gonna trim the edges as well now just to make it a little bit more aesthetically beautiful. There we go, and last but not the least, we're gonna put 3 holes into the top of the empanada to allow the steam to escape. So, just do it like so. There you go, that is a beautiful empanada. So, you can place all of that on the cookie sheet. So, we'll do the same thing with our remaining dough and we'll put it in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 18 to 20 minutes until our empanadas get nice and light brown. Well, our empanadas are out of the oven and they look delicious. They are really nice light golden brown just beautiful as we write like them. Now, you should get about 6 empanadas from this recipe. We've got 3 here on our baking dish. So, let's transfer that. We'll put one on plate here and cut it open, and this is just gonna be a really great snack or appetizer. You can serve with a great salad eat it just like that, and there you go, you can see that beautiful meat and vege in there all cooked through and that's it. This is how you make your Southwest Beef Empanadas.