How to Make Empanadas Gallegas - Galician Turnovers

Empanadas Gallegas or Galician Turnovers are one of the most popular dishes from Galicia. Empanadas in Galicia are traditionally large round or square turnovers that are cut into pieces to serve. The version that we will make here are smaller individual turnovers, commonly referred to as empanadillas. The dough recipe makes enough dough to make one large empanada or several dozen empanadillas. For simplicity's sake, we will refer to them as empanadas in this step-by-step.

Learn all about Galicia's Regional Cuisine in our article Spanish Regional Cuisine.

There are several steps to making the empanadas Gallegas or Galician Turnovers - cook the tomato sauce for the filling, make the dough and filling, and finally, fold and bake the empanadas.

Important Note: This step-by-step includes recipes for both meat and tuna fillings and you can make either. The dough recipe is enough for 1 of the fillings, not both! So, if you plan on making both fillings, you'll need to double the dough recipe.

Let's start with the sofrito, tomato sauce sautéed with olive oil and onions:

To make either the meat and tuna filling, you'll need to make Spanish Sofrito, (click to see recipe.)

While the sofrito cools, go to the next step and start preparing the dough.