Every culture has their own tasty fried food.  In India and the surrounding countries, it’s samosas:  stuffed dough pockets pinched into a triangular shape and fried.  Samosas can have any type of filling, but because there are so many vegetarians in India it’s pretty easy to find them meat-free.

We recently found a recipe for samosas in the New York Times, and we decided to try it out, making our own small changes along the way.  Here’s what we used:

• Flour
• Salt
• Cumin seeds
• Vegetable oil
• An onion
• Pepper
• Mustard powder
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Turmeric
• 2 chiles
• 3 potatoes
• 3 carrots

First we made the samosa dough.  We put 2 cups of flour, some salt, a teaspoon of cumin seeds, and 1/4 cup vegetable oil in a bowl and mixed everything up by hand.  We added 1/4 cup water and began kneading everything together, then put in another 1/4 cup water, and after a few minutes we had a good dough.  We wrapped it tightly in plastic wrap and set it aside for 30 minutes.

While we were waiting, we got started on the veggies:

We first chopped up our onion, seasoned it with salt and pepper, and sautéed it in vegetable oil.  In a separate pan, we cooked a teaspoon of cumin seeds and a small amount of mustard powder in a little bit of oil and then added two cloves of minced garlic, a small knob of grated ginger, a pinch of turmeric, and our chopped chiles.  Then we added those spices to the onions and let everything cook.

At the same time, we diced up our potatoes and carrots and let set them in a boiling pot of well-salted water for 15 minutes.  Once they were soft, we drained the carrots and potatoes and added them to the onion mixture.  To help everything cool down, we out the veggies in a bowl and stuck it in the refrigerator for a few minutes.  

Once all this was cooked, the dough was ready.  We split the dough into four parts and divided each part into five equal pieces, which we rolled by hand into balls.  We then flattened each ball into a disk and rolled it out with a rolling pin until it was pretty thin.  We cut each disk into two semicircles and folded each in half to make a triangle-ish shape.  To make them into pockets, we pinched two of the sides together so so that there was only one opening.

Next, we took the potato mixture and mashed it up a little.  We scooped out large teaspoons of potatoes to stuff inside each piece of dough and then sealed them shut with our hands.

To fry each samosa, we got a large and deep skillet and put 2 cups of vegetable oil in it.  We heated the oil for around 7 minutes over high heat and then began cooking the samosas.  We made sure they were brown on the bottom before flipping them over to fry on the other side, and then when they were done we put them on double layers of paper towels to cool.

This what what they looked like when they were done …

… and they were delicious!  Besides the obvious draw of fried dough and potatoes, the spices added a nice taste and the chiles made it just a little bit spicy.  These samosas did take a long time to make – probably around 2 hours – and there were a ton of dishes to wash at the end, but it was nice to have these snacks at home instead of only being able to get them at Indian restaurants.  If you have an afternoon with a lot of time on your hands, definitely try these out!