Making real mexican empanadas

The empanadas from Mexico have this unique touch to them and have been influenced by the English recipe for "cornish pasties" and from other countries' influences as well, such as France as an example. In a nutshell, the recipe for empanadas came from Europe, then landed in Argentina and from there has conquered Mexico, evolving along the way to the Mexican specialty they are now. Consider that nowadays all Mexicans know what an empanada is; however, it was only as recent as 1973 that an Argentinian couple started a restaurant chain in Mexico, bringing this specialty to mexicans. These new savoury empanadas were added to the already known cajeta ones; so in Mexico an empanada can be a sweet dessert (covered with sugar and filled with fruit jams) or salty, which is filled by meat, vegetable or chicken. These are the most popular, but in Mexico there are many other empanadas, like mushrooms with cheese and chicken with mole which are exclusive to Mexico.

The empanadas in Mexico have many different flavors, the empanadas from Pachuca (pastes pachuqueños) are the ones closest to the original recipe from England. Other varieties such as the volovanes (from the french vol-au-vent) of Veracruz, have a different shape: square, not oval, and the most common filling there is with crab meat.

The little secret your local empanaderia doesn't want you to learn about, especially if you frequently buy empanadas from them (!), is the ready-made empanada dough disc packs. You find them at the frozen goods section of your local latin products store... These will save you tremendous time, especially if you are like me: dough-making and rolling challenged! Since there really aren't that many ingredients that go into the dough itself in the first place, there isn't much that can go wrong by using the ready-made empanada discs upon making your first empanadas... Or the ones after that; but this is just a thought.