The large, fluffy empanadas are made with very thin rolled dough and just a little bit of filling. The filled dough goes into a large pan of oil and puffs up, filling with air bubbles. This makes the empanada fluffy. Since they’re so thin, they cook super quickly. These empanadas are either filled with cheese or meat. The cheese ones are served with sugar which you sprinkle on top. The savory ones are served with something called aji. It’s a sauce made with red onions, spicy peppers, cilantro, lime, and a fruit called tamarillo or el tomate de árbol (a tree tomato). It’s a nice mild salsa which you can put on anything, not just empanadas.
If you don’t want a fluffy empanada, there are also smaller, crispier options. These ones are fried too, but they have lots more filling packed into their crispy shells. They’re usually filled with a mixture of meat, potato, vegetables, cheese and platanos verdes (green plantains). The potato and mashed plantain help the filling stick together. If you get crispy empanadas de pollo (chicken empanadas), you’ll get aji and a mayonnaise sauce to go with them. I also really like empanadas de camarón (shrimp empanadas). Instead of aji or mayonnaise, I add lime juice to these. At restaurants, they bring you halves of limes and your own lime squeezer.
The ingredients used to make empanadas are usually local. Ecuador grows lots of vegetables, plantains and potatoes. Did you know potatoes originally came from the Andean region of South America? Corn is also a staple of Ecuadorian cooking, and most of the empanadas I’ve eaten include it in the filling.
