Cheese Empanadas

Cheese Empanadas

Cheese Empanadas

This is a nice and simple empanada recipe. Having the sugar in the cheese mix brings out a little sweetness mixed with savory, making this hard to not eat the entire batch of empanadas in one sitting. I blame the devil’s lettuce.
Prep Time15 minutes
Cook Time10 minutes
Total Time25 minutes
Course: Appetizer
Cuisine: Mexican
Keyword: appetizer, Mexican
Author: Alex Gorgos

Ingredients

Empanada Dough

  • 1 1/2 cup masa harina flour
  • 1 1/4 cup warm water
  • 1/2 tsp salt

Empanada Filling

  • 1 1/2 cup crumbled queso fresco
  • 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella
  • 4 tsp sugar
  • 2 green onion finely chopped

Garnish

  • shredded cabbage
  • sliced tomato
  • sour cream
  • cilantro
  • serrano pepper thinly sliced
  • crumbled queso fresco

Instructions

Empanada Filling

  • Mix all filling ingredients together. Set aside.
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Empanada Dough

  • Mix all of the dough ingredients together. You may need to add a little bit more warm water to the dough. The consistency should feel like firm mashed potatoes. 
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Cheese Empanada Assembly

  • Roll the dough into equally sized balls, depending on how big you want your empanadas to be. I made mine fairy large and yielded 6. 8 is a more realistic size, but that’s really up to you.
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  • Using a tortilla press, place 1 dough ball on top of a halved ziplock bag with the other side of the bag over the top, in the center.
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  • Press until the dough is about 1/8″thick.
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  • Take off the top ziplock bag. Place 2 heaping tbsp of the cheese filling across the top half of the flattened dough ball.
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  • Take the bottom half of the ziplock bag and fold over the empanada. Crimp the edges while they are underneath the plastic.
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  • I like to then roll the crimped edges of the empanadas in a little more to make them more secure. f you want to take it a step farther, crimp the edges with a fork after this step.
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  • Heat up cooking oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Fry the empanadas in batches, making sure to not overcrowd the pan.
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  • Fry for 4-5 minutes a side.
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  • Drain on paper towel.
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  • Place the empanadas over a bed of shredded cabbage. Top with sour cream, more queso fresco, diced tomato, and cilantro. If you’d like a little heat, add sliced Serrano peppers on top.
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  • Mexican, appetizer