Charting the Empanada: the Southern Provinces

The province of Neuquén is famous for its lamb empanadas, as well as sandwiches featuring crispy trout in pine nut bread, goat casserole in dark beer, and croissants made from pine nut flour.

Its distinctive feature is the use of merkén, a smoked chili pepper, as a condiment in its empanadas and in various other dishes of its local cuisine. There is also a variety filled with goat meat, an animal native to the region, which is growing in popularity.

In Río Negro, you can find empanadas filled with goat, guanaco, or lamb meat. Their hallmark? The empanada made with Tehuelche octopus. Since the 1950s, this native species has been caught at low tide, using a traditional hook method.

Pulpy cuts are used, such as bottom round, rump steak, or sirloin tip, and they are wrapped in a traditional pastry to hold the juicy filling made in this province. The traditional condiment of the Mapuche people, merkén, is usually also included. 

The signature empanadas from the province of Chubut, primarily along the coast, are filled with scallops or seafood. The pastry is also seasoned with paprika, giving it a distinctive color that distinguishes it from other varieties.

Lamb is the star when it comes to meat, but some regions also use shrimp, mussels, clams, octopus, crab, Argentinian sandperch, and grouper, among other things.

In Santa Cruz, as in the rest of the south, lamb empanadas are very popular, but with one special feature: because the sheep’s diet is based on hard grass, the meat is soft, lean, tasty, and melts in the mouth.

The local guanaco empanadas are becoming more common, as well as those filled with hare, lesser rhea, or trout, fished from the marvelous rivers and lakes in the province. Sports fishermen travel from all over the world to fish there.

In Tierra del fuego, at the southern-most tip of Argentina, and of the Americas, the empanadas are filled with lamb and spider crab, making use of the high-quality local produce, which is indispensable to the local cuisine.

The sea dominates the cuisine of Tierra del fuego, clearly evidenced by the varieties of empanada found all through the province: the most notable being squid with shallots, or spider crab with capers and white wine.