Middle Eastern Ground Turkey Empanadas

Submitted by Demandy

"I wanted to create a new type of empanada using some middle-eastern spices and a healthier meat. These little babies would be great to take on a picnic, in a lunch, or to the beach. They are also a low-calorie, low-fat meal. These have no cheese or red meat, and would be fine for IBS sufferers."

 

• Ready In: 50mins
• Ingredients: 15
• Yields: 17 empanadas
• Serves: 8

ingredients

• Filling

• 1 lb lean ground turkey
• 1 red pepper, diced
• 4 ounces mushrooms, sliced
• 1 small onion, diced
• 2 green onions, sliced
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon baharat (see Baharat Aka Middle East Mixed Spices - the Real Mix)
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1⁄2 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons curry powder
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1⁄4 cup water

• Pastry

• 2 (14 ounce) packages goya discos
• 1 egg, beaten

directions

1. Remove discos from freezer to defrost. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Brown ground turkey in skillet, drain fat.
3. Add green onion, onion, red pepper, garlic, and mushrooms. Cook until soft. Add salt, spices, tomato paste and water. If you have no tomato paste, you can use some tomato sauce. If you have no baharat, you can substitute with a small amount of clove, cardamom, coriander, and nutmeg (or leave it out if you prefer). When filling has been sufficiently mixed, remove from heat.
4. Take a disco from the packaging and place it on a piece of wax paper. Put a tablespoon or two of filling on one side. (You can use refrigerated biscuit dough or frozen pie crust if you cannot find discos, but you may need to adjust baking time and temp.) Seal edges using fork tines to go around the edge on the top and bottom of empanada. Then set aside on plate in fridge. Repeat this with the rest of the discos until all filling is gone.
5. Spray cookie sheet with cooking spray and lay the empanadas on the sheet. Brush tops of empanadas with beaten egg, for gloss. Bake empanadas ten minutes or until golden brown. Then bake second batch same way.

Reviews

[Cheerleader Forever]

Easy to make, fast and very yummy! I used large refrig. biscuits and rolled them out a little bigger. Added all ingredients except the baharat and just added red pepper seasoning instead of the real thing.