Mini mushrooms & dills empanadas

I am such a lazy chef. I really enjoy cooking but if I had to make pastry from scratch every time I would rarely make empanadas.

Thankfully, in the UK most of the big brands ready-made shortcrust and puff pastries is vegan which makes it easy for me to expand my horizon and create simple recipes like these mini empanadas to cure your pasty cravings. It is a lifesaver!

OK, let’s do it!!

First, finely chop the mushrooms, red onion and dill. Alternatively, if you’ve got a good food processor you can roughly chop everything then put them in the processor and let it do its job.

You want to end up with a fine dice like in the picture below, not a paste.

Heat the oil in a large non-stick frying pan on a high heat. Add the minced garlic and fry until golden.

Add the finely chopped vegetables and stir fry for 2-3 minutes.

Add the tomato purée, and salt and pepper. Turn the heat down to medium and stir fry until all the water has evaporated. Remove the filling from the stove, let it cool down and rest for 5-10 minutes.

Unroll the pastry sheet and use a cutter to create 10 cm circles. (If you don’t have a circle cutter you can use the top of a pint or wine glass instead).

You should be able to get 9-10 circles out of the pastry sheet.

Squash together the off-cuts and re-roll to make another 3-5 circles.

Gently roll out each circle to smooth the edges and make the pastry a bit thinner. You can see in the picture below – the right one is the original and the left one has been slightly rolled.

Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan.

Add the sweetcorn to the filling and mix well.

Spoon 1 small tablespoon onto the centre of each pastry circle.

Brush around the edge with water and fold the pastry in half. Press the edges together with a fork to seal. Repeat the same process until all of your pastry sheets have been filled and sealed.

Cut the excess edge with scissors to keep the empanada looking pretty.

Place all empanadas on a baking tray lined with parchment baking paper, brush each one with aquafaba, and sprinkle the sesame seeds on top.

Aquafaba is the viscous water in which legume seeds such as chickpeas have been cooked. You can replace it with soy or almond milk if you don’t have it.

Bake for 20mins until golden and crispy.

King usually hates anything with dill in (I love it 🥺), but I guess there are so many flavours going on with this empanada that he actually hasn’t realised that lots of dill is used 😂😂. This recipe is also kid-friendly, I made it for a 3-year-old’s birthday party and the kids loved it sooo much.

These bite-sized empanadas are the perfect finger food for a summer party or afternoon snack. You can serve them with vegan sour cream or a chilli, tomato sauce, but they taste amazing on their own as well.

Let me know if you try out this recipe. You can leave a comment below, or take a picture and tag it with #k33_kitchen and share it on Instagram! I’d love to see what you come up with. Cheers, hope you enjoy my recipes!