Empanadas: what is its origin in Latin America? Every country has a story to tell

The (delicious) history of empanadas in Latin America 4:58

(CNN Spanish) -

On the street, in restaurants or homemade.

Empanadas can be found in all kinds of places if you go to Latin America.

Although, yes, each country has a story to tell about this food.

The common point that Latin countries have in this dish is Europe (although with Arab and African overtones in some cases).

Whether they were Spanish, English or others, empanadas are here to stay and be transformed.

There are them with or without cheese;

with various sauces;

made from wheat or corn flour;

stuffed with savory stews or with fruit and sweet syrups;

fried or baked.

All these details will always be a matter of discussion, although they also represent the enormous gastronomic diversity of the region.

We would never try to tell you which is the best empanada, but here we leave you a list about its origin in Latin America and the different ways in which it is eaten.

The origin of empanadas in Latin America

Argentina

According to the Argentine historian Daniel Balmaceda in his book

, "the ancient peoples of the Mediterranean were already breading."

“Its popularity (of the empanada) in the West stemmed from the immeasurable exchange that took place during the Crusades and took root among pilgrims who covered long distances.

The breaded foods were faithful companions of those who undertook the route to Santiago de Compostela ”, says Balmaceda.

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It is believed that the empanada came to Argentina from the hand of Spanish immigrants.

Balmaceda says that already in 1810 there were vendors of empanadas in River Plate territory.

And, at the beginning of the 20th century, “the street sale of empanadas was divided in two.

On the one hand, the Spanish: they offered their product fresh, but cold.

Southern Italians, on the other hand, sold the empanadas hot, although it was the way to hide the lack of freshness.

Because, in reality, they were overheated ”.

Currently there is a great variety of empanadas in Argentina, but among the most traditional, known as empanadas criollas, are the empanada from Tucumán, which is stuffed with meat cut with a knife, egg and green onion;

the salteña, which adds papa to its content;

and the Catamarca, which have raisins.

And then there are the empanadas stuffed with ham and cheese, vegetables, chicken, humita and many other options.

The type of cooking also varies: they can be fried or baked.

Characteristics of Creole empanadas

• Dough: flour, salt, water, melted fat

• Filling: meat (cut with a knife or minced, depending on the region), green onion and, depending on the region, includes potatoes, raisins, eggs and / or olives.

  They are often used as seasonings, in addition to salt, sweet paprika, oregano and cumin

• Average price: between 70 and 150 Argentine pesos (between US $ 0.70 and US $ 1.50)

Colombia

In Colombia, empanadas —which have Spanish and African influence— are as old as their own history, as they are named for the first time in the chronicles of friars and missionaries who arrived at the time of the Conquest, according to Germán Patiño Ossa in his book

.

And one of the first recorded recipes for empanadas in Colombia can be found in a 1775 text that included eggs, butter, butter and flour, among others.

Today empanadas are made from corn dough (some with wheat flour).

They are made of ingredients such as potatoes, meat, chicken, rice, eggs, vegetables and even cheese with a sandwich, a traditional and thick guava sweet, and at the end they are served fried.

They are sold in restaurants, street stalls, or by street vendors, who walk and look for customers in the streets to alleviate the hunger of students, workers, laborers, office workers, at any time of the day for a few pesos.

"This has no stratum," says Alfonso Reyes, manager of an empanada factory in western Bogotá.

"Eat from the one that has 1,700 pesos (about US $ 0.45) to the one that has to buy 200 or 300 empanadas and it is pleasant to any palate."

In Bogotá we find the oldest empanadas in the city, with a tradition of 120 years of history in the restaurant Las Margaritas, founded in 1902. Julio Ríos, the owner, says that his ancestors sold empanadas to the more affluent classes of that Bogotá who It was not yet the metropolis that it is today.

And, thanks to the inauguration of the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes in 1904, the business became popular.

"There they went to mass and communed with the divine, and then they left the church in Lourdes and here they communed with the earthly," Ríos recalls with a laugh.

Las Margaritas is famous for having the best and oldest empanadas in Bogotá.

It even proudly sports a 2003 trophy for "Best Empanadas in Latin America," made with corn, rice, chickpeas, beef, and fried in lard.

To eat empanadas in Colombia there is a golden rule: they are accompanied with chili, with lemon, sauces or guacamole.

There are no hours and, of course, you can not only eat one: there is always room for one more.

Characteristics of the Colombian empanada

• Dough: corn flour or wheat flour

• Filling: potato and meat;

  potato and chicken;

  rice and meat;

  just potato;

  vegetarians, among others.

  Salt, tomato, onion are added for the stew

• Average price: between 1,700 and 3,500 Colombian pesos (between US $ 0.45 and US $ 1)

Mexico

The history of empanadas in Mexico could not be understood without mentioning Real del Monte (officially Mineral del Monte), a town of just over 14,000 inhabitants that is located in the state of Hidalgo, in the center of the country.

This town is famous for its mining tradition.

In the 18th century, the Spanish were in charge of exploiting their mines.

However, in 1824 the English arrived to continue with the extraction of metals, and with this they left a gastronomic representative that persists until now: the paste.

Freshly baked traditional Mexican pastries.

(Photo: CNN In Spanish)

Before their arrival at Real del Monte, the miners of the English county of Cornwall already used to eat their traditional “cornish pastry” at lunchtime, whose dough has a designation of origin in Cornwall to be made “both broken, as semi-puff pastry and puff pastry” , mention chefs Blanca López Hernández and Alexia Vázquez Hernández, both from the Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo.

The traditional English pastry was stuffed with potato with meat and was large: "25 centimeters long, 14 wide and equivalent in weight exceeds 500 grams", says Pedro Baca Rivera, guide of the Paste Museum (one of the attractions of Real del Monte) since its foundation in 2012.

In Mexico, after the arrival of the English, the name changed from "pastry" to "paste";

the mass that became popular was the quebrada;

and the size changed to about 15cm long and 8cm wide.

Mexican cuisine added several touches to the English of potato with meat, such as spicy;

and created one that is now traditional paste: refried beans with chorizo.

Potato paste with meat, one of the two traditional in Mexico.

(Photo: CNN In Spanish)

Therefore, according to Baca Rivera, the original pastes of Real del Monte are potato with meat and beans with chorizo.

But the guide of the Museum of Paste assures that this town was also the place of origin of empanadas (most commercial in all of Mexico) in 1882 due to the popularity of the paste.

The difference?

The empanadas are filled with all kinds of dishes, from mole to rice pudding.

So, as a reminder: in Mexico, there are empanadas of many flavors, but there are only two pastes.

Characteristics of the potato paste with meat

• Dough: wheat flour, butter, salt and pulque (traditional Mexican drink) instead of water

• Filling: potato, leek or onion, meat, chili, parsley, salt and pepper

• Average price: between 15 and 20 Mexican pesos (between US $ 0.75 and US $ 1)

Venezuela

The Venezuelan empanada has, like most of its variants throughout the American continent, an origin in the versions inherited from Spain, including the Galician.

According to the Venezuelan Nutrition Annals, the Creole empanada is a corn dough wrapper with a filling that can be made with any edible ingredient and whose cooking is the result of frying in oil.

But, for Oscar Hernández, chef and "foodie", the empanada is happiness.

The Venezuelan empanada adopted corn as the base of the dough, just like the arepa.

Only in the Andean zone and in Zulia is the empanada with wheat flour dough used more, explains Hernández.

From then on, the empanada has given joy to breakfasts, lunches and even dinners for Venezuelans.

The cultural transit of the empanada is reflected in the long list of fillings that it can have and, in more recent times, variants such as using sauces.

The sale of empanada in Venezuela introduced a couple of decades ago the sauces that have turned the act of eating an empanada into a ritual.

From the garlic one, through the guasacaca (based on avocado and spices), the pink sauce and a very decent variety of peppers.

Víctor Moreno, a retired history teacher and lover of good food, made reference to the history of the empanada citing the book by sociologist María Martínez Suárez, La Empanada Criolla en la Historia y la Tradicion, in which the route is briefly mentioned. of empanadas from distant Mesopotamia, from where there are references to the predecessors of our American empanadas.

In the case of Venezuela, the empanadas would have come from the hand of the Spanish colonizers in the 16th century.

Characteristics of the Venezuelan empanada

• Corn or wheat flour dough, water, salt and a sweet touch from the Andean region.

  There are other variants of plantain or cassava dough (cassava).

• Stuffing: the classics, cheese, ground meat or shredded meat, dogfish, shrimp, roast, pork rinds, vegetables, black beans with cheese and, in some areas of the Venezuelan plains, they are made from chigüire meat also known as capybara or capybara .

  There are also sweet banana and guava fillings.

• Average price: 2.16 digital bolivars (about US $ 1)

Uruguay

Empanadas are one of those dishes "that unite many Latin American countries with the old world," Gustavo Laborde, a doctor in Anthropology and Uruguayan teacher, told CNN.

Although it is not known exactly how it arrived in Uruguay, it may be linked to Spain, says Laborde, but without forgetting that such preparations also "have a long tradition in the Arab world."

"The conquest transfers many dishes that today we perceive as very Creole and that are of quite deep Arabic roots," he says.

Another possible antecedent of this food in the "old world", before its arrival in the Río de la Plata, dates from the Middle Ages, when in some cases travelers, in the absence of containers to carry food, wrapped in mass what they were going to eat.

Beyond its origins, the empanada has an American development, explains Laborde. 

They were already present in the first cookbooks of the Río de la Plata, dating from the late 1880s and 1890s. Their strength in Uruguay at the end of the 19th century is manifested in a state banquet prepared for a president who counted, as part of the menu, with "empanadas a la creole", according to the local custom of Frenchizing the terms. "What the elites throughout Latin America are doing in the 19th century is putting the great dishes of international cuisine, which is French cuisine, on an equal footing with local dishes," he says.

Unlike what happens in other countries, the empanada in Uruguay does not grow as a street food option, but as a passing food option.

Meat and ham and cheese are the fillings that dominate, says Laborde.

And in the case of meat, "we have adopted much more the type of empanadas from the Argentine provinces," he says, but in a "whimsical" way: we call them empanadas from Salta or Cordoba, for example, but without necessarily respecting those preparations.

Characteristics of the most common Uruguayan empanada

• Dough: wheat flour, water, salt, fat

• Filling: minced meat, onion, bell pepper, garlic.

  Possible extra ingredients: egg, olives, raisins

• Average price: 75 Uruguayan pesos (US $ 1.71)

Empanadas