Chorizo Bacon Empanadas with an Avocado Sour Cream Dipping Sauce

I love empanadas, perogies, dumplings, pasties, and pretty much any food that is fried or baked dough stuffed with deliciousness. So I decided to try my hand at baked empanadas. I love this website: http://laylita.com/recipes/, so after reading through about a dozen or so recipes for both dough and filling I had a fair idea of how to go about this. And I must say the result was super tasty.

For the dough:

• 3 cups flour (I use all-purpose)
• Pinch of kosher salt
• 1 1/2 sticks butter (about 6 oz), frozen
• 1 large egg
• 4 TBS water
• Egg wash (usually an egg beaten with a few drops of water) 

Directions for the dough:
Mix the flour and salt together. Grate the frozen butter into the flour and toss together. Add egg and water and mix until dough is clumpy. Form into a ball (if still dry, add water a tsp at a time until dough just sticks together enough to manipulate), wrap in cellophane, and chill for 30 minutes.  While dough is chilling, prep the filling.

Filling:

• 2 potatoes, finely chopped
• 1 large chorizo link, casing removed 
• 3 strips of bacon, rough chopped
• 3 green onions
• 1 large clove of garlic, minced
• 1 cups pepperjack cheese, grated
• 1 cup queso fresco
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions for filling
Saute the potatoes, chorizo, bacon, green onions, and garlic together until the potatoes are fully cooked. Remove from heat and let cool.

Assembling the empanadas.
Take the chilled dough and roll out on a floured surface into a thin sheet. Using either a round lid like I did or a large circular cookie cutter, as I would recommend, cut the dough into circles. Fill each dough round with a heaping spoonful of the chorizo mixture and top with the cheese, making sure to not overfill. Fold the dough over and crimp to close. Arrange the uncooked empanadas on a baking sheet with parchment and chill for an additional 20 to 30 minutes. While the empanadas are chilling, heat the oven to 375*F.
Brush the empanadas with egg wash just before putting in the oven. Bake until golden brown, or about 20 minutes.
While the empanadas are baking, you can make the dipping sauce.

Dipping sauce:
2 avocados
1 container of sour cream (about 16 oz)
3 cloves of garlic
salt and pepper to taste

In a blender on high speed, puree together the sour cream, avocados, garlic, salt and pepper until smooth.

At this point I poured the dipping sauce into a bowl and set it at the center of a plate. Once the empanadas were slightly less volcanic and I could pick them up without burning myself I arranged them around the bowl and brought it out to serve.

The result was super delicious.