Sausage Ragu with Pappardelle Pasta

Empanada sauce

 This is an empanada sauce created especially for serving with the homemade empanadas I shared today. Loosely based on a traditional Colombian sauce called hogao, it has a wickedly good smokey flavour from char-roasting tomatoes in the oven. Use leftovers as a dip!

Dipping Beef empanada in sauce

I’m a firm believer than empanadas should be so great, you want to grab them straight out of the oven and eat them plain. Make the beef empanadas – and you will! Hot and crispy on the outside, juicy and flavourful on the inside, it’s everything an empanada should be!

But it is nice to have something wet to dip empanadas into because the reality is that there is only so juicy you can make the empanada filling without compromising the crispiness of the base. Empanadas are not like, say, Aussie meat pies which have molten gravy fillings.

While the beef empanada recipe includes various simple sauce options, this empanada sauce was created especially and is by far the best!

Empanada sauce with empanadas

Ingredients in empanada sauce

This empanada sauce is based on a traditional Colombian sauce called hogao and is made with tomato that’s roasted until charred for beautiful smoky flavour.

Empanada sauce ingredients
  • Tomatoes – 2 medium ones, about 125g/4oz each.

  • Garlic cloves – Peel the skin off but keep them whole.

  • Spices – cumin for flavour and cayenne pepper for a warm buzz.

  • Sugar – just a tiny amount, to balance the flavour

  • Lime juice – for freshness/sour. Substitute with lemon or a vinegar (it’s only a small amount so substitutions are flexible)

  • Green onion – for a bit of freshness and nice bits of green in the sauce


How to make Empanada sauce

Two simple steps:

  1. Roast the tomato and garlic until you get nice charred edges which gives the sauce its special smokey flavour; then

  2. Blitz!

Making Empanada sauce
Roast the tomatoes until charred on the edges for a lovely smokey flavour

Serve with fresh, homemade empanadas.

Weep with joy.

No recipe video for this one because it’s an extra recipe for the beef empanadas and relatively straight forward. Though I can never resist if there’s demand, so leave your request below if you’d like a recipe video! – Nagi x

Dipping empanada in Empanada sauce

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