The vegan empanada recipe and my favorite fillings

The empanadas and dumplings They are a type of stuffed dough that is very common not only in Spain, but also in America and Southeast Asia. In other regions they also have their own stuffed doughs, such as indian samosas and the Eastern European pirozhkis. In the end, the empanada and the empanada are almost universal dishes, because almost everyone likes a good filling and a good baked or fried dough.

In Spain we have a lot of different ways to make both empanadas and dumplings, many of them depending on the region. For example the Galician empanadathe panades either valencian pastissetsthe canary trout…

The differences range from just the filling to the way they are cooked or the dough that covers it. In any supermarket we can find dough for dumplings, but not usually vegan. In most cases it contains animal fats, eggs and/or dairy products.

A homemade dough does not usually contain these ingredients. Homemade doughs are usually made simply with wheat flour, oil, and water. I leave you a very simple empanada dough recipe.

Vegan empanada dough recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup whole wheat flour 1 cup cornstarch 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil ½ cup cold water ¼ teaspoon salt

Preparation:

Mix the flour with the cornstarch and salt in a bowl. Add the olive oil and water and stir well until it starts to form a ball. Knead it by hand in the bowl for a couple of minutes, until it becomes a soft dough (if necessary you can add a little more water or flour ). Let it rest, covered, for 1 hour. Scoop out the dough, knead it a little on a lightly floured surface, and roll it out with a rolling pin. It has to be thin, about half a centimeter, so that later the dumplings do not come out too fat. To cut the discs or wafers, use a ring, a glass or a large round cookie cutter (usually it is done with a glass) and see cutting circles of dough. Knead and stretch again the dough that is left over and cut the ones you can. So that they do not stick together, put a little flour on top. Use them at the moment.

As a filling you can use a homemade ratatouille, textured soybeans with tomato, spinach, minced vegetables… They are just a few examples.

Another option is to get empanada wafers from vegan puff pastry sheets, pizza dough or shortcrust pastry. All these masses give a different texture to your empanada, but they are also useful for us.

Alternatives for the empanada dough

In countries like Venezuela, the dough is made with ground or precooked cornmeal instead of wheat flour, and in India the dough for samosas is similar to ours, but much finer (they also sell it, frozen). For the empanadas there are also differences by region (and even in each house they are made in a different way).

In general empanada dough is a bread dough with a little more oil. We can make it homemade by controlling the ingredients we put in or, as it becomes increasingly popular, buy it pre-made and refrigerated.

For the empanadas you can also use pizza dough, shortcrust pastry, puff pastry, or regular bread dough. I prefer puff pastry, if the filling is not too oily.

As for the dumplings, my favorites are with homemade dough. In addition, commercial wafers often contain ingredients of animal origin.

The good thing is that we can make both the empanadas and the empanadas with the filling that we wantand that gives us a lot of play when it comes to reusing things that we have already made or disposing of leftover vegetables that we have in the fridge.

I leave you a couple of different recipes as an example. You can change them to your liking and use the ingredients that you have in the fridge or that are in season.

From Türkiye: börek

The borek is a phyllo pastry filled with feta cheese, greens and vegetables. It is very easy to prepare, with tofu, and it will give us for 4-6 people.

Ingredients:

1 roll of refrigerated phyllo dough 200 g hard tofu 250 g chopped fresh spinach (or baby spinach) 2 tablespoons olive oil Pinch of black pepper ¼ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon sesame seeds Olive oil for brushing

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Put baking paper on a baking tray. In a skillet, sauté the spinach with olive oil, pepper and salt. Crumble the tofu with your hands and add it. Take it off the heat. Put a sheet of phyllo dough on the tray, brush it with a little olive oil and place another on top. Paint it too and put another one on top. This will be the base of the empanada.Place the filling on top, spreading it out well. It should be finite.Place 4 sheets of phyllo dough over the filling, brushed with olive oil, and sprinkle with the sesame seeds.Bake it at 180ºC for 25-30 minutes, until the phyllo dough is golden (without burning). Take it out and serve it.

From Mallorca: vegetable cocarrois

These types of dumplings are very easy to prepare. It is a butter bread dough stuffed with vegetables baked in the oven. To make a vegan version very similar to the original, we will use a 100% vegetable margarine to taste.

Ingredients:

100 g of 100% vegetable margarine100 ml of extra virgin olive oil150 ml of water½ teaspoon of salt500 g of flour

For the filling:

½ onion 250 g cauliflower 150 g cabbage or cabbage 50 g raisins 25 g pine nuts 4 tablespoons olive oil Pinch ground black pepper ¼ teaspoon salt

Preparation:

In a bowl, beat the margarine until smooth. Add the oil and beat it all together by hand. Gradually add the water, salt and flour, until a dense dough is formed. Cover it and let it rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour. For the filling, chop all the ingredients (except raisins and pine nuts) and fry them for a few minutes in a pan with the oil, salt and pepper. Remove it from the heat when the onion begins to be translucent (it will finish cooking in the oven). Add the raisins and pine nuts and mix. Take portions of dough (about the size of a ping pong ball) and roll out on a floured surface. It has to be about ½ centimeter thick. Put a couple of tablespoons of dough in the center and fold it closing the ends by hand, pressing and folding towards the center so that the filling does not come out. When you have them all done, bake them at 180ºC for about 35-40 minutes, until they are golden brown. outside. You can serve them cold or hot.