recipes

Vegan “beef” empanadas

These savory, slightly sweet empanadas are technically an appetizer but once you’ve eaten your third one you’ll consider it a meal. Loosely based on this recipe from Beyond Meat.

Ingredients (makes 10-12 regular-sized empanadas)

Dough:

• Follow dough recipe on Beyond Meat website, use empanada dough discs, or use pie crust for savory pies cut into discs

Filling:

• 2 tablespoons of neutral oil (Sunflower)
• 1 yellow onion diced
• 2-3 garlic cloves minced
• 1-2 roma tomatoes diced
• 1-2 ripe (sweet) plantains, cooked and diced (frozen kind works too)
• 1/2 bell pepper, diced
• 4 green olives, quartered
• 1 tablespoon, tomato paste
• 1 lb vegetarian ground beef substitute (Gardein brand is a good option)
• 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon vegan worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• Red pepper flakes, to taste
• 1/4 cup vegetarian broth (Better than Bouillon “no beef” base + water is a good option)
• Salt and freshly-ground pepper, to taste
• Aji, chimichurri, or cilantro sauce to accompany

Instructions

1. Thaw empanada dough discs overnight in the fridge. Read the directions on your box of beef substitute to see if it needs to be thawed before being cooked - if so, thaw it ahead of cooking.

2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

3. In a large deep pan on medium heat, add oil to warm up then add diced onions. Cook until onions are translucent (about 6 mins).

4. Add garlic, tomatoes, plantains, bell peppers, olives and cook until they’ve reduced a bit (about 5 mins).

5. Mix in tomato paste. Let the paste cook for about 2 minutes.

6. Add beef substitute, soy sauce, worcestershire sauce, dried oregano, cumin, paprika, and red pepper flakes cook for about 9 minutes.

7. While the filling cooks, add broth to keep it from drying out too much.

8. Toward the end taste the filling mixture and add salt and pepper to adjust flavors. Remove mixture from heat.

9. Roll out dough discs to expand them a bit and add about 2-3 tablespoons of the empanada filling.

10. Fold each disc and seal by pressing a fork along the edge.

11. Place empanadas on sprayed baking sheet.

12. Once all empanadas are on the baking tray, spray the top of each with cooking spray.

13. Set into oven and bake for 30-35 minutes.

14. Once baked, immediately place empanadas on a cooling rack to prevent the bottoms from cooking further.

15. Enjoy with an aji, chimichurri, or cilantro sauce.

This site is open source. Improve this page.