Pastrami Empanadas
For the last two Meatwave seasons, I've had a hankering to make some pastrami again but I was never finding time or the right menu to fit it into. With the last cookout of 2025 approaching, I decided I didn't want to wait another year and smoked up a pastrami and then crafted the rest of the menu around fall eats that I thought would be good accompaniments. Now that I had a pastrami, I wanted to see if I could get some new recipes out of it and came up with a couple (not super creative) ideas with the first being these pastrami empanadas.
I really like the salty, peppery, and earthy flavor of pastrami, so much so that I've not only done the traditional brisket version, but also used my base recipe on pork belly for bacon, beef short ribs, duck breasts, and even tempeh for a vegetarian version. I went standard here though and ventured through the whole process of curing a brisket flat for five days, applying a peppery rub, smoking, and finally steaming it to get the right flavor and texture that makes pastrami such a joy.
Now the options of what I could have done with the pastrami from here were pretty endless and that made it difficult to hone in singular ideas, but I also hadn't made empanadas for a couple years and with my last recipe being a really excellent smoked beef empanada, I figured why not go for a repeat success. So I whipped up the same dough recipe, which is pretty simple with melting butter in water, then adding the liquids to all purpose flour with a little salt, and then working the mixture until a smooth dough forms. That gets rested in the fridge for at least a couple hours, but up to a couple days if you'd like to prep far ahead of time.
My favorite way to enjoy pastrami is formed into reubens, so my first thought was to just make the filling out of those exact sandwich ingredients, but that seemed too predictable. What I ended up settling on was different, albeit still predictable if you know my recipes, and had me cooking up a batch of caramelized onions.
I wanted some additional flavor in there and mustard was calling. So I also mixed up a very simple sauce of whole grain and smooth Dijon mustard with some mayonnaise added for good measure.
I had made the pastrami the day prior so it would be completely cooled when it came time for empanada construction. This made it easy to make somewhat thin slices and then chop those slices up into a rough dice.
I mixed the diced beef with the sauce, chopped caramelized onions, and Swiss cheese. I gave it taste as was happy with what I had going on and knew it would only be all the better once the meat was hot and the cheese was melty.
To assemble the empanadas, I rolled the dough out and used my largest biscuit cutter to make circles. The rounds were not quite large enough though, so I also rolled them out a little bigger after cutting. I got as many as I could out of the dough, then placed a heaping tablespoon of filling in the center before wetting the edges of the dough and sealing them shut. I used the pinch and tuck method to more firmly seal the dough and also create an attractive edge pattern, but you can do whatever works best for you, like sealing with the tines of a fork.
At this point I actually froze the empanadas because I was prepping a week in advance, but they can be baked right away. Either way, just remember to brush them with an egg wash first to give them that attractive shiny and browned exterior.
While I chose not to go the reuben route for these, I did make reuben hot dogs for this cookout, so already had Russian dressing made and used that as the sauce served alongside. It was a nice accompaniment but really, these empanadas were great on their own with no dipping sauce. The combo of the fatty beef, cheese, and mustard sauce meant that they were incredibly juicy and creamy on their own. They also needed no enhancement in the flavor department—the strong salty, peppery, and beef pastrami flavor played a leading role with mustard adding to that sharpness, while both the sweet onions and cheese provided tempering contrasts. They certainly delivered on the pastrami fix I was after and left me with another incredibly beef empanada entry into recipe archive.
