Chilean Empanadas

the buttery, pillowy dough alone is worth making this recipe

Welcome back to another installment of Empanadas Around Latin America, and today we are headed to Chile. 🇨🇱

If you’ve been following along, then you know every Latin American country has its own version, and every version tells you something about where it came from. Chile’s version might be the most historically interesting one yet.

A Brief History

The empanada made its way to Chile through Spanish colonizers, but the name “pino” actually comes from the Mapuche people, the indigenous community of Chile whose roots go back 2,000 years. The word pino is derived from the Mapuche word “pinu”, meaning pieces of cooked meat, and Mapuche cooks started making these empanadas during the Spanish conquest with the introduction of wheat and beef. So this dish is genuinely a collision of two cultures on one plate, and by the 1600s it was already mainstream in both communities. There is even a record of a Spanish soldier captured by the Mapuche in 1620 writing about being fed empanadas during his captivity. They were that embedded in daily life.

Today, empanadas de pino are the centerpiece of Fiestas Patrias, Chile’s Independence Day celebrations, and many Chilean families eat them every Sunday.

Now, Chile actually has two main styles of empanada. The empanada de pino is the baked version, made with wheat-flour dough, beef filling, hard-boiled egg, olives, and optional raisins, sealed with a distinctive folded closure and baked until golden. This is the version I’m covering today.

Then there’s the fried version, typically filled with cheese or seafood, and that one gets the crimped edge you might be more familiar with seeing on other Latin empanadas.

The closure on mine is that classic squared-off rectangular fold you can see in the photos. It’s a completely different technique from every other empanada we’ve made in this series.

Makes 12 empanadas

Filling (Pino)

• 1 lb ground beef

• 1 whole onion, diced

• 2 tbsp oil

• ½ tsp cumin

• ½ tsp oregano

• 1 tsp salt

• 1 tsp black pepper

• 2 tsp paprika

• 1 cup beef stock

• 3 tbsp flour

Empanada Dough

• 3½ cups all-purpose flour

• ½ cup milk

• ½ cup water

• 3½ oz butter, melted

• ½ tbsp salt

• 1 egg

Assembly

• 3 hard-boiled eggs, quartered

• Black olives (optional)

• Raisins (optional)

• 1 egg, beaten for egg wash

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