This is my favorite food from Puerto Rico, but since I can’t always find Goya Empanada discs and I hate making pie crust from scratch, I use egg rolls. Chicken Empanadas to Egg Rolls.
Chicken Empanadillas or Egg Rolls
Ingredients
- A bag of Tyson Chicken frozen Pulled Chicken Breast or generic brand OR 5-6 Boneless Chicken Breast cooked and shredded
- 2 – 4 tsp of Adobo
- 1 medium onion chopped
- 2-3 TBSP of Sofrito
- 1 packet of Sazon
- 1/2 jar of red peppers diced, and about 1-2 TBSP of the juice
- 1 TBSP minced garlic
- 2 Fistfuls of Fresh Cilantro
- Small can of tomato sauce
- 2 packages of Egg Roll Wraps or Goya Empanada Shells
- Oil in a skillet or deep fryer
Instructions
- Prepare the chicken. If you are using raw chicken, boil in water with Adobo and a chicken bouillon cube. Once cooked thoroughly, remove from heat and dice or shred. You may decide to save water/broth for chicken noodle soup. Like grab some noodles and you got a side dish.
- Put chicken in a medium to large sauce pan. If you prepared chicken, just put it in as is. If you are using a bag of Frozen Chicken pieces, just dump that into the pot and add the Adobo.
- Place pot over medium heat.
- Add chopped onion and minced garlic. Let that cook for about 3 minutes.
- Then add Sofrito, Sazon, Red Peppers and Juice, Cilantro and a small can of tomato sauce. Cook until all the ingredients are warm.
- Go ahead and get your grease warm for frying. You want it hot.
- If you go with Empanada Shells, spoon the mixture into the center of the shell. Fold over, and seal the edges with a fork (like a pie).
- If you go with Egg Roll Wraps, get a small bowl of water handy, place wrap like a diamond in front of you. Spoon mixture into the center almost like a log going horizontal from left corner to right corner with a good margin. About 1 heaping spoon will work. Fold the bottom corner over the chicken halfway between the chicken and the top corner. Fold in the left and right corners. Roll upward. Then dip your finger into water, spread on the top corner, and flatten it onto the roll. Repeat with a second egg roll wrap over it to add extra crisp and reduce liquid leakage. So 2 egg roll wraps per Egg Roll.
- Once you get 2 things rolled, go ahead and place in frying pan / deep fryer. I find that frying 2 at a time is fastest and effective. So while those 2 are starting to fry, I quickly make a 3rd Roll. Then I flip the 2 in the fryer (they generally float) using kitchen tongs, and quickly make a 4th Roll. Then I remove the 2 in the fryer (placed on a plate with a paper towel lining the bottom), add the next two, and repeat until I’m done.
- If you go with egg rolls, you cannot save them for later once put together without cooking them. The egg just breaks up from the liquid. You do not want to leave them sit prepared for long before frying. You don’t want to prepare them all in a pile and then attempt to deep fry or they will just form a huge mass. I generally make all the egg rolls I can with the chicken and let people reheat the leftovers. Usually there are no leftovers. My kids can eat 4 or 5 of these each if I let them.
- If you go with empanada shells, you can save them for later once put together without cooking them. So you can prepare them until you run out of ingredient and only deep fry what you want to eat. The rest, you can wrap them individually in parchment paper and freeze. Then remove and deep fry whenever you want one, as easy as microwaving an instant meal if you keep a deep fryer out and handy.
Notes
Where did I get this recipe?
My now ex-mother-in-law made this often for me, and I got the recipe from her. She resides in Ponce, and this is something you can buy from many little deli like shops.
Now I did alter the recipe on account of empanada disc availability. I’m not sure how gringa it was of me to turn these into egg rolls.
A Little about the ingredients…
Some of these ingredients may be hard to find, but you can learn more about the ingredients and substitutions on my Flavors of Puerto Rico page.
Step 1: Prepare the Chicken
The main idea is to have chicken in a pulled or diced form.
You can do this a number of ways.
I generally just buy a bag of Tyson Pulled Chicken, frozen, and dump that with some Adobo in a pot. You can add a little (like a teaspoon) of chicken bouillon powder.
Before Tyson had pulled chicken like that, I would get Fresh Chicken Breasts (or Thighs) and boil them with a chicken bouillon cube and some Adobo. Then I’d save the broth for chicken noodle soup, and then slice the chicken into a pulled version with a butter knife. Then add that to the pot.
You can also find frozen chicken cubes.
Last, you can always order Grilled Chicken Filets from Wendy’s drive thru, and you can request them diced like they do on the salads.
The idea though is this is a filling in between some starch. So you want the chicken to be fluid.
Step 2: Throw the rest of ingredients in (besides your shells and frying stuff)
Basically, you just add all the ingredients to the pot for the chicken filling.
Usually the protocol to cooking, which I learned from my ex-mother-in-law, is first you add the meat to the pot. Let that cook a bit. You really can let that go for 10 minutes while you chop veggies, but you want to stir regularly. Which is why I like using wooden or bamboo spoons, so I can leave it in the pot.
Then you add raw veggies that need to soften a bit. Like your onion, green pepper, fresh red pepper, garlic, etc.
Then you add the other ingredients.
You season as you go. Like you can add the meat with Adobo. Then add veggies and more Adobo or the Sazon or both, and then add the rest of the ingredients, and maybe more Sazon or Adobo. You gotta feel it.
Step 3: Prepare the egg rolls or Empanadas & Fry
Empanadas / Empanadillas
If I use empanada discs, I generally prepare those at once. Stacked on a plate. Then I fry.
With those, you spoon the chicken in the center. Fold in half. And seal with a fork.
They look like this…
You can make pie crust from scratch (or purchase refrigerated pie crust) and cut in a circle and then use them that way. Generally, I find that method to be too flaky for the fork to work effectively. You really want to keep the filling inside the empanada, or the grease will go cray cray on ya.
So for that, you might consider a different pie method like…
The beautiful thing about pie crust / empanada discs is that you can prepare these with raw dough, and then wrap them in parchment paper and freeze for later. This way, you can fry as you go, like fry only what you need, and then have more to fry later. If you keep the deep fryer handy, ready to fry at any time, you can make easy snacks that are fresh and much more delicious than microwave meals in the time and ease of a microwave. The only problem with that is, in my experience, the deep fryer makes extra greasy messes to clean, so I’ve put my deep fryer into storage.
Eggrolls
Now for egg rolls, my method is different. The issue with egg roll wraps is that the filling can be a bit runny, and it really breaks up that egg quick.
If you attempt to prepare 20 egg rolls, and stack them raw on a plate, and then deep fry, by the time you’re done making them, they will be one giant pile of mush.
So here, I make 2 egg rolls at a time.
Get a small bowl of water handy. Get your egg roll wraps open and stacked. Get a plate.
- Put the wrap like a diamond facing you.
- Spoon chicken across the center, leaving a margin.
- Fold up the bottom corner to about halfway between chicken and top corner.
- Fold the side corners into the center.
- Roll like a burrito.
- Wet the tips of two fingers in the water, and then glide over the inner part of the top corner.
- Then place that down and kind of rub it together.
- Repeat with a second egg roll wrap.
I do usually use two egg roll wraps per egg roll just to help make sure I keep the chicken inside the egg roll, and it makes it extra crispier.
I first make two of these while the grease heats up, and I put the two in the fryer.
Then I quickly make a 3rd one.
Then flip the 2 in the fryer.
Then make a 4th one.
Remove the two in the fryer, and add two more.
Continue until finished.
Substitute Ingredients
For Adobo, use a little garlic salt, pepper, and oregano.
For Sofrito, mix 1/2 onion, 1 and a half green pepper, 1 red pepper, 2 TSP of Minced Garlic, some Adobo, a fistful of cilantro, and a little oregano into a blender (or food processor) until well blended. Add a little olive oil to help preserve it. Store in fridge. Maybe in an old clean margarine tub.
For Sazon, mix equal amounts of ground coriander, ground cumin, paprika, and garlic salt.
Substitute Methods
You can put this chicken filling almost anywhere like…
- Pot Pies
- Won Ton Wraps inside muffin pan and bake
- In a hamburger bun like a pulled pork sandwich
- On top of white rice
- On Pizza Crust
- On Flat Bread
- Inside a tortilla shell
You can also fill Egg Roll Wraps and Empanada Discs with almost anything like…
- Pizza – Pepperoni, Mozzarella, Pizza Sauce
- Any mixture of meat and vegetables
- Chicken, corn, carrot shavings, gravy
- Mississippi Roast pieces and peppers
- Pot Roast with American Cheese
- Taco Meat and Taco Toppings
- Apple Pie Filling
- Leftovers
