According to Wilson, empanadas owe their popularity to their flavor and portability. “You can put virtually anything in them to appeal to all kinds of tastes, whether sweet or savory,” she says. “While they’re not necessarily easy to make, they’re easy to consume. They freeze well, and they can go from the freezer to the fryer. Chefs do all kinds of things with them, and offer them as a first course or bar food, either really high end or just for snacking. They can be cheap, but they don’t have to be.”
When she cooked at the James Beard House in New York, one of Wilson’s appetizers consisted of tiny, rabbit-filled pastelillos, the Puerto Rican name for empanadas. Indeed, the Puerto Rico municipality of Nagüabo is said to be the birthplace of pastelillo de chapín, flour dough folded around trunkfish and deep-fried to create a tasty food found on the menus of almost all seaside establishments on the island.
Empanadas can be fat laden like the ones Wilsons’s family in San Juan deep-fries in lard, or healthy, filled with vegetables or fruit and baked. An empanada can deliver satisfying mouthfeel contrast either way. Given its versatility and ability to meet so many consumer demands, including flavor, value, and convenience, it’s a mystery to Wilson why empanadas are not more mainstream in U.S. culture.
“It can’t be the name; consider dulce de leche, which everybody identifies with,” she says. “Empanada is an easy word to say, and if you don’t speak Spanish, you still won’t sound like an idiot. Empanada sounds like it looks.”
Primed to Play for the Masses
Serving nearly 39 million consumers each week in up to 5,600 restaurants in the U.S., if any company can propel an empanada to mainstream, it might be Irvine, California-based Taco Bell Corp., which introduced its Caramel Apple Empanada when it launched its Big Bell Value Menu in 2004.
John Pugh, project manager for empanadas on Taco Bell’s price-value team, says the Caramel Apple Empanada is the only permanent product on the value menu identified with a photo. Sales have been consistently strong since launch, and Pugh says the item—inspired by Mexican culinary tradition—has become one of the brand’s best-selling items since being added to the menu.
Taco Time, owned by Kahala Corp., requires that each of the more than 300 company-owned and franchised restaurants throughout the U.S. and Canada carry three dessert empanadas on the menu year round. Two of those must be cherry and apple. The third variety is left up to individual stores, but might be Bavarian cream or, in the autumn, pumpkin pie, served with a cup of whipped cream for dipping. “Razzleberry,” a mixture of raspberry and blueberry pie fillings, is a popular empanada choice among operators.
An empanada variety that’s barely reminiscent of Latin food but a best-seller where and when it’s offered is raspberry cheesecake, says Kevin Gingrich, brand president and a franchisee of three Taco Time locations in Utah.
Each 4-ounce empanada, handcrafted and deep-fried in 100 percent trans fat free vegetable oil, sells from 99 cents to about $1.19 depending on location. The empanada is a top-seller on Taco Time’s dessert menu, Gingrich says, competing with trademarked Crustos, strips of deep-fried flour tortilla covered in a mix of cinnamon and sugar, and outperforming all other desserts including the Choco Taco, fudge ice cream in a taco-shaped cone covered in milk chocolate and peanuts.