Empanadas: A Colorado family food tradition
HUERFANO COUNTY, Colo. — For families with southern Colorado heritage like Frances Quintana and Sylvia Brandl’s, nothing fosters the celebration of the holidays like making empanadas. The cousins have been getting together for years to make the traditional fried dough with a variety of fillings.
The sweet-or-savory palm-sized turnovers filled with mince meats and fruits and fried in oil can be found on dinner tables across southern Colorado, and far beyond to any other place with Spanish or Latin roots. The name ‘empanada’ comes from the Spanish verb “empanar,” meaning “to bread.”
Growing up, empanadas were the hallmark of the holiday, said Quintana, 93. “We made them for Christmas all the time. Pumpkin and meat empanadas were our Christmas goodies. I learned to make empanadas by watching my mother,” she said. “It was so much fun.”
Quintana and her family were raised in Farisita, a rural area near Gardner in Huerfano County. Today, she continues the family tradition of making sweet pork and squash empanadas, often with Brandl.
Quintana hails from Farisita, a small town in rural Huerfano County. “Farisita was once called Talpa, but there was some confusion with the Talpa of Taos, so they named the town after the youngest daughter of the Faris family,” said Quintana of her hometown.
Photo: Kate Perdoni, Rocky Mountain PBS.
“Learning from her is learning from the best,” Brandl said of spending time with Quintana through the years as she has kneaded and fried the empanadas.
Quintana said she enjoys passing her family’s food ways on to her children and relatives, like Brandl, although she never uses a recipe, which can make it harder to pass on the tradition. Quintana cooks and bakes by taste.
After years of making empanadas with her cousin, Brandl said she was finally able to capture the family recipe in writing by measuring the ingredients that Quintana eyeballed before she threw them into the bowl.
“I said, ‘Wait, wait, wait, stop, Frances! Let me measure what you have in your hand!’ And we’d write it down,” Brandl said. “And so that's how we got the recipe written down, is because I measured everything she did.”
Empanadas family recipe shared with permission by Sylvia Brandl and Frances Quintana.
Makes about 4 dozen
Dough:
5 lbs of flour
1 T baking powder
2 tsp salt
1 cup of shortening
4 cups water
2 T sugar
Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Knead in 1 cup of shortening. Form a bowl in the center of the flour mixture and add 4 cups of warm water. Knead in until well mixed. Cover and let rise. Make small balls of the dough and roll them out like small tortillas. Place the filling in the tortilla and pinch the edges well to seal the filling in. Place into a deep pan of hot oil, one empanada at a time, and cook until golden brown, flipping halfway through cooking.
Caution: The squash empanadas require a very good seal on the edges, or it can result in the empanada opening up in the hot oil and splattering.
Pumpkin/Squash filling:
Note: The squash is cooked beforehand by steaming it until it is soft and scooping it off its shell.
Heat up your pumpkin and add sugar, vanilla, cinnamon and nuts to taste. Beat 3 eggs and add them to the pumpkin. Stir and then let filling cool before using in the empanadas.
Pork filling:
4 lbs of pork loin
2 1/2-3 cups of sugar
1.5 tsp salt
¾ cups raisins
2 T cinnamon
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups of walnuts 1 1.2 cups of broth
Boiled potatoes in shell
Boil the pork loin until cooked. Reserve the broth to add to the mixture later. Peel the boiled potatoes. You want equal parts pork loin to boiled potato. Grind the pork and potatoes in a meat grinder into a big mixing boil. Mix in remaining ingredients. You want the pork and potato mixture to stick together.
Empanadas Recipe
Flour, water, shortening or lard, baking powder, salt, and sugar are combined and kneaded, then let to rise. Small discs of dough are flattened with a rolling pin, stuffed with a prepared filling of choice, and the edges twisted into a seal before frying on the stove top in hot oil. Empanadas can also be baked, and are served hot or frozen for future meals.
“In person, you really get to see the magic that she does,” Brandl said of Quintana’s lifetime of expertise making empanadas. “These are some of my favorite memories.”
Kate Perdoni is the Engagement Journalism Director at Rocky Mountain PBS. KatePerdoni@rmpbs.org