Portuguese · Seafood
Spring onion and prawn empanadas
About this recipe
Portuguese cooking is fundamentally a seafood and pork tradition, with bacalhau (salt cod) appearing in hundreds of forms, alongside Mediterranean staples — olive oil, garlic, tomato, sweet paprika — applied differently than in Spain.
As a seafood dish, Spring onion and prawn empanadas demands timing precision: the difference between perfect and overcooked is often less than 90 seconds, and the result of overshooting is a textural penalty there's no fixing.
The scaler above rewrites every measurement to your target serving count, with proper culinary fractions (½, ⅓, ¼) instead of decimals so the recipe stays measurable. Cook Mode steps you through it hands-free.
Recipe data is sourced from TheMealDB's open community database; ScaleRecipe handles the curation, the scaling math, the editorial commentary, and the conversion utilities woven into each page.
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Method
- STEP 1
- To make the dough, rub the butter into the flour and then add the egg white and half the yolk (keep the rest), vinegar, a pinch of salt and enough cold water to make a soft dough. Knead on a floured surface until smooth and then wrap and rest for 30 minutes.
- STEP 2
- Heat the oven to 180c/fan 160c/gas 4. Trim the green ends of the spring onions and then finely slice the rest. Heat a little oil in a pan and fry them gently until soft but not browned. Add the chilli and garlic, stir and then add the prawns and cook until they are opaque. Season well. Scoop out the prawns and bubble the juices until they thicken, then add back the prawns.
- STEP 3
- Divide the empanada dough into eight balls and roll out to thin circles on a floured surface. Put some filling on one half of the dough, sprinkle the feta on top and fold the other half over. Trim the edge and then fold and crimp the dough together so the empanada is tightly sealed, put it on an oiled baking sheet either on its side or sitting on its un-crimped edge like a cornish pasty. Repeat with the remaining dough and mixture. Mix the leftover egg yolk with a splash of water and brush the top of the empanadas.
- STEP 4
- Bake for 30 minutes or until golden and slightly crisp around the edges.
Cooking notes
Scaling works best when you weigh ingredients rather than measure by volume — small differences in packing can compound at higher multipliers.
For volume-to-weight conversions of any ingredient — flour, sugar, butter, salts — use the ingredient converter. To translate the recipe's oven temperature between °C, °F and gas mark, see the temperature converter.
When you scale this recipe up or down, remember that cooking time does not scale linearly. A doubled cake takes longer, but not twice as long; a doubled soup takes roughly twice as long. The cooking-time guide gives sensible starting estimates by dish geometry.
Scaling notes
Scaling Spring onion and prawn empanadas
Spring onion and prawn empanadas is written for around four servings as it stands on this page — scaling it up for a party or down for a meal-for-one is the small math problem most home cooks face every week. Here's how this particular dish responds to scaling, what changes linearly, and what doesn't.
Seafood is the most scaling-sensitive protein because the overcooking window is narrow and the penalty is steep. Scale Spring onion and prawn empanadas per piece if you can — cook three fillets in two batches rather than crowd the pan into one. Sauce-based seafood dishes scale linearly, but always taste before adding more salt: brininess from the seafood itself doesn't scale predictably.
This recipe calls for eggs, which are the trickiest ingredient to scale to non-integer multiples. A US "large" egg weighs about 50 g; if a fractional scaling lands on, say, 1.5 eggs, beat one egg and weigh 25 g of the beaten mixture rather than guessing. The same goes for halving recipes — half an egg is 25 g of beaten egg, not a dramatic estimate.
When you scale the flour in this recipe, weigh it in grams if you can — a cup of flour can weigh anywhere from 113 g to 150 g depending on how you measure. The ScaleRecipe ingredient converter uses the King Arthur Baking reference of 120 g/cup for all-purpose flour, which is the same standard most modern baking books assume.
Skip the math entirely — ScaleRecipe's scaler rewrites every ingredient line above with proper culinary fractions and smart unit promotion the moment you change the serving count. Open the scaler →
Beyond the recipe
Substitutions & make-ahead — Spring onion and prawn empanadas
Two things home cooks ask about most when they're outside the recipe's exact assumptions: what swaps work for which ingredients, and how the dish behaves when you make it ahead. Both depend on what Spring onion and prawn empanadas is doing structurally — here's the practical version.
Substitution ideas
Eggs
For binding (cookies, quick breads, meatballs): 1 large egg ≈ 1 tbsp ground flaxseed + 3 tbsp water, rested 5 minutes until gelled — structurally closest to a real egg. For moisture without structure (cakes, brownies): ¼ cup unsweetened applesauce or mashed banana per egg, accepting some loss of rise.
Butter
For sautéing or browning, equal-weight olive oil or a neutral oil works directly. For baking, equal-weight coconut oil (melted, then chilled to the same softness the recipe expects) gives a buttery richness; a quality vegan butter brick is the structural match for cookies and pastries where firmness matters.
All-purpose flour
For gluten-free, a 1-to-1 gluten-free baking blend (one that contains xanthan gum) is the most reliable swap. For texture variations: bread flour gives chewier results; cake flour gives more tender. Avoid almond or oat flour as a 1:1 swap — they don't form gluten and most recipes structurally depend on it.
For weight-based swaps and arbitrary quantities, the ingredient density converter and the cup-to-grams chart cover most pantry staples.
Make-ahead and storage
Seafood is the worst-tempered category for make-ahead — texture and flavour both degrade quickly after cooking. Spring onion and prawn empanadas should ideally be cooked the day it's served. If a make-ahead is unavoidable, prep components (the sauce, marinade, vegetables, garnishes) the day before and cook the fish or shellfish at the last moment. Cooked seafood develops a pronounced fishy off-flavour within 24 hours even when properly refrigerated.
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Spring onion and prawn empanadas
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Cooking aids
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Each opens in a new tab so the timer keeps running. The math is auditable on the guide page below each converter, with worked examples and where the numbers come from.
Volume
Tablespoons, teaspoons, cups, ml, fluid ounces — every culinary volume unit, with US/metric/imperial cups handled distinctly.
OpenWeight
Grams, ounces, pounds, kilograms — exact for any ingredient, plus the volume-to-weight conversions for ~40 pantry staples.
OpenTemperature
Fahrenheit, Celsius, gas mark — translate any oven temperature, with notes on conventional vs convection.
OpenCooking time
The cube-root rule for scaling up, the differences between meat / cake / soup geometry, and sensible starting estimates.
OpenPan size
9-inch round vs 8-inch square vs 13×9. The math is surface area, not diameter — and the converter shows you both.
OpenLength
Inches and centimetres — for when a recipe says “cut into 1-inch pieces” and your ruler is metric.
OpenIngredient density
A cup of flour weighs 120 g; a cup of honey weighs 340. The full table of ~40 staples, with sources.
OpenOpen in main scaler
Edit the recipe text, scale by serving count, and copy the result. Same parser as the in-page scaler, more room to work.
OpenFrom the journal
Original essays on the small details.
The why behind the technique — original writing on the ingredient and equipment choices that separate a good cook from a frustrated one.
Reading a recipe like a chef
The 30-or-so recipe terms that show up most often, decoded
Read essayMay 4, 2026
Cooking for one — scaling principles
The math, the practical realities, and the recipes designed for one from the start
Read essayMay 4, 2026
How long do leftovers actually last?
Beyond the USDA's 3–4 days: the variables that actually determine the safe window
Read essayMay 4, 2026
Go deeper
Where this recipe sits in the wider tradition.
Each guide below is a real essay on the cuisine or the category — pillars, staples, techniques worth learning — paired with a curated grid of recipes filed under it.
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