Empanada de pino

As tradition built it

Bake 200 to 220°C, 20 to 25 minutes.

Ingredients

• 1kg minced or finely chopped beef beef, minced or finely chopped, roughly equal weight to the onion
• 1kg (3 large or 4 medium onions), finely chopped onion, finely chopped, roughly equal weight to the beef
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 2 tbsp ají de color
• to taste salt and pepper
• made from 1kg flour dough, cut into 12 to 20 rounds empanada dough, cut into circles
• 5 eggs, quartered hard-boiled egg, in pieces
• 20 olives
• 40, optional raisins, optional, a genuinely live household disagreement

Method

1. Sauté the beef and onion together, roughly equal weight, with cumin, ají de color, salt and pepper, cooking the onion down properly so it loses its raw acidity and supplies moisture and natural sweetness.
2. Assemble a circle of dough with the pino, a piece of hard-boiled egg, an olive and, depending on the household, raisins.
3. Seal with the repulgue, a crimped fold that is functional rather than decorative, sealing in the juices and steam during baking.
4. Bake at 200 to 220°C for 20 to 25 minutes.

What a modern chef changes

A slow-sweated pino, baked in a Big Green Egg

Method

1. Sweat the pino at a genuinely low heat for 40 to 60 minutes, rather than the rushed 10 to 15 minutes some modern recipes allow, so the onion loses all its raw acidity before it ever meets the pastry, the single variable that decides whether the finished empanada sits heavy or light.
2. Bake in a Big Green Egg run as an oven at 200 to 220°C with a pizza stone rather than in a domestic oven, approximating the horno de barro's enveloping radiant heat and faint smoke aroma.
3. Toast and grind the cumin fresh in a dedicated spice grinder rather than using pre-ground.
4. Clarify the butter for the dough through a chinois for a cleaner, shorter crumb.