🥟 Samosa
A samosa is a deep-fried pastry, usually triangular, filled with spiced potato and green peas flavoured with cumin and coriander. The shell is thick, crisp and blistered, the filling soft and aromatic. Sold everywhere from street stalls to sweet shops in India, it is eaten hot as a snack, often with tamarind or mint-coriander chutney.
Diets
Allergens
Contains (in a typical recipe):
What it is made of
Recipe
Ingredients
- 250 g plain flour
- 50 ml oil plus oil for frying
- About 90 ml cold water
- 500 g potatoes, boiled and diced
- 100 g green peas
- 1 tsp cumin seeds, 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 green chilli and fresh coriander leaves, chopped
- Salt to taste
Method
- Rub the flour with 50 ml oil and a pinch of salt, add water to form a firm dough and rest for 30 minutes.
- Toast the cumin in a little oil, add the potatoes, peas, coriander, chilli and salt and cook for 3 minutes; cool.
- Roll the dough into ovals, cut in half, form each half into a cone, fill and seal the edge with water.
- Fry on medium-low heat (about 160 °C) for 10–12 minutes until golden and crisp.
How to make it lighter
- Bake the samosas at 200 °C after brushing them with oil instead of deep-frying.
- Have one samosa with a big bowl of salad or chana instead of two or three alone.
- Use a mint-coriander chutney rather than sweet sauces.
History
Medieval Arabic and Persian texts describe filled pastries called sanbusaj or sanbosag, and such pastries are thought to have reached South Asia with traders and cooks from Central Asia and the Middle East. The potato filling familiar today came later, after potatoes reached India from the Americas. The samosa is now one of the most popular snacks across South Asia and its diaspora.
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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →