Pastelillos de Carne (Puerto Rican Turnovers) | Pastelillo Dough Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What are pastelillos made of? ›

These pastelillos have the unique flavor of Puerto Rican seasonings, green olives, and lean beef combined in a deep-fried pastry for a deliciously spicy turnover. They can be served small as appetizers or meal size.

Similar to an American turnover but far more versatile, an empanada is a fried or baked pastry shaped like a crescent moon. Once the bread has been made with flour dough or corn flour dough, it's then stuffed with myriad fillings depending on the occasion and your taste.

Empanadillas/empanadas are larger in size. Pastelillos are smaller. They both contain meat, like beef, pork, ground turkey, cheese, guayaba paste or crab meat.

While pie dough is designed to be flaky, empanada dough is meant to be more tender. Pastry for empanadas has a higher flour-to-fat ratio, making it sturdy and perfect for wrapping around meaty fillings. Some recipes use lard or an additional egg as the fat source, but our recipe keeps it simple and easy with butter.

These are a few of the known names: Meat Pies (American) Empanadas (Latin/Spanish) Pastelillos (Latin/Spanish)

Empanada dough is less flaky than pie crust (although you can substitute frozen pie crust dough in a pinch). It has a more tender texture that soaks up the filling without becoming soggy. This dough can be used for baked or fried empanadas, which are both great handheld dishes.

Here's a delicious, flaky wrapper that's perfect for capturing all your favorite flavors: GOYA® Empanada Dough. Our line of ready-to-use flour dough discs are the #1 ingredient for preparing a wide variety of empanadas, a favorite in Latin America and around the world.

An empanada is a type of baked or fried turnover consisting of pastry and filling, common in Spain, other Southern European countries, Latin American countries, and the Philippines.

The vibrancy of Puerto Rican culture comes alive in its dishes, a celebration of flavors that visitors have the opportunity to indulge in. Some of the favorites are mofongo, tostones, pasteles, arroz con gandules, tembleque, and coquito.

Puerto Rico has the eternal debate of what to call the pastelillo, empanada, empanadilla, pastel etc. “In the south of the island they call everything an empanadilla; while, in the center of the island and the north, they call it pastelillo.

What do Puerto Ricans call empanadas? ›

Empanadas! But they are not empanadas, they are pastelillos (pas-te-lee-joes). In Puerto Rico what you may call empanadas we call empanadillas because of empanadas references something that is breaded and fried, think chicken fried steak.

Adding a little vinegar to your dough will result in a tender, pliable, and flaky crust because it slightly inhibits gluten development, leading to a crust that is flakier and easier to work with. The great thing about vinegar is that you really only need a little bit of it to help your pie/empanada dough.

Both cooking methods produce delicious empanadas. If you want a healthier merienda, bake them in the oven. If you're working with less time, frying them is the way to go. Try both and ask your loved ones to vote on their favorite.

Vinegar helps with creating a tender and moist crumb

But it's not just about the rise! Vinegar also helps in creating a tender and moist crumb in our baked goods. This is because the acidity of vinegar interferes with gluten development.

Empanadas have their origin in the Spanish action Empanar connoting “wrap in bread.” Traditional empanadas hence are simply beef stuffing wrapped in pastry dough. Beef empanadas are small palm-sized meat pockets. They resemble the Arabian Samosas and Italian calzones.

In Puerto Rico, empanadas are made of a flour base and fried, known either as empanadillas or pastelillos- a hotly debated topic usually dependent on the region of the island and/or the type of border on the pastry.

Some date indicates that at the beginning of the 20th century pasteles made its way from Puerto Rico to San Cristobal, Dominican Republic. Although the first recipes appear in a Dominican cookbook, pasteles were first written about in aguinaldo Puertorriqueño in 1843 about Puerto Rican Christmas traditions.