Empanadas are a national speciality food found throughout South America but to our mind those from Argentina are the best.
As a dish they are first mentioned in the original recipe books of the Iberian peninsula, around 1520, and exported to South America from the Spanish colonies. These are highly popular, delicious stuffed rolls, whose name comes from the verb empanar, which means, to stuff, or to dress.
Empanadas can also be casera, meaning homemade, or bought in bakeries and even supermarkets.
Those served at La Bamba de Areco were of course made in the kitchens freshly each day and came as a sort of appetiser before lunch and were quite delicious.
Every region of every country seems to makes its own style of empanada, and all claim theirs are the best ones!
The pastry, or masa, is almost the same throughout the continent, but it is the way that it is cooked or the way that the empanadas are stuffed that changes!
Empanadas are very nourishing and can be cooked in oven, or the can be fried. Our favourites are the beef and onion spicy flavoured ones but they are often served stuffed with mincemeat, raisins, olives, onions and sundried tomatoes, seasoned with pepper, paprika and cumin.
Their decorated edges and folds are their signature!
Argentineans’ mostly eat them as as hors d’oeuvres, and they can also be ordered in bars or confiterias, often being eaten as coma entrada (starter) in the parillas.