Looked at a bunch of those recipes and a few others and mixed a few ideas together and came up with these. Corn flour dough (for a really crispy texture) and classic empanada filling (ground beef, onion, garlic, olives, boiled egg and raisin). So basically I mixed ideas from a Trinidadian style Arepa, pastel and empanada and came up with this.
After creating these today I have 3 pieces of advance that in my opinion can turn a run of the mill homemade empanada/ Trinidadian arepa from tasty/ but not pretty looking to something that looks more professionally made.
If possible:
1. Use a tortillas press. You get more uniform shaped dough which not only helps all empanadas/ arepas cook evenly, but helps keep the dough from ripping and letting the filling out.
2. Use molds. I bough them a while ago, but never got around to using them until. Wow!!!! What a difference it made. All the empanadas/ arepas were sealed perfectly, had the same shape and pretty decorative pattern on the edges. Having all the empanada/ arepas the same shape with the dough at the same thickness creates an overall better looking and tasting product.
3. Use a food processor to grind/ chop the meat once cooked. In my opinion it just makes the filling have a better texture. I would do this before adding the raisins or egg.
4. This works best as a group activity with at least 3 or 4 people. Once the dough and filling are prepared this is how I would suggest diving jobs to make this process move a lot faster.
person #1 rolls the dough in to little balls.
person #2 pressing the dough in the tortilla press.
person #3 puts the flattened dough in to the mould, adds the filling and closes the mould to create the shape.
person #4 stacks the finished product in the storage containers neatly in a pattern that will not cause the end product to get damaged.
Mid way a gain a little helper, which actually made a huge difference.
After they were made a got a lot of helping eating them
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.. both mine are gone now and those ladies did not write things down as they cook from memory).
Thanks ..
