Vegetable Samosas
Crispy triangular pastries stuffed with spiced potatoes and peas — India's most recognised street snack, with roots in medieval Central Asia that trace back over a thousand years and a journey spanning the Silk Road.
- 2 cupsall-purpose flour
- 1/3 cupvegetable oil(plus more for frying)
- 1 tspkosher salt(divided)
- 1/2 cupwater(cold)
- 1 lbrusset potatoes(boiled and cubed)
- 1/2 cupfrozen peas(thawed)
- 1 smallyellow onion(diced)
- 1 tbspfresh ginger(minced)
- 1 wholegreen chile(minced)
- 1 tspgaram masala
- 1 tspcumin seeds
- 1/2 tspturmeric
- 2 tbspfresh cilantro(chopped)
Unbaked samosas freeze well for up to 3 months. Fry directly from frozen, adding a few minutes to cooking time.
- 1Make dough: mix flour, 1/2 tsp salt, and oil until crumbly, add water to form stiff dough, rest 30 minutes
- 2Make filling: sauté cumin seeds in 2 tbsp oil, add onion, ginger, and chile, cook until soft
- 3Add spices, potatoes, peas, remaining salt, and cilantro, mash slightly, cool completely
- 4Divide dough into 8 balls, roll each into an oval, cut in half
- 5Form each half into a cone, seal edge with water
- 6Fill cone with 2 tbsp filling, seal top edge firmly
- 7Heat oil to 325°F, fry samosas in batches 6-8 minutes until golden brown
- 8Drain on paper towels, serve hot with tamarind and mint chutneys
The dough should be stiff, not soft - this creates the signature flaky layers. Let filling cool completely before wrapping.
The samosa's name comes directly from the Middle Persian word sambosag, meaning "triangular pastry," and the dish itself has been traveling for over a thousand years. The earliest known written reference appears in a 9th-century Arabic poem by Abbasid-era poet Ishaq al-Mawsili, who praised the sanbusaj. Arab cookbooks of the 10th through 13th centuries describe similar stuffed pastries under names including sanbusak and sanbusaq — all derived from the same Persian root — detailing triangular shapes packed with meat, nuts, and spices, popular in the courts and markets of the medieval Middle East and Central Asia. The samosa traveled into the Indian subcontinent through the Muslim Delhi Sultanate, carried by traders, court cooks, and travelers along the same Silk Road routes that carried spices and textiles. By around 1300, the court poet and scholar Amir Khusro documented a "samosa prepared from meat, ghee, onion," and in the 14th century the Moroccan explorer Ibn Battuta described elaborately filled triangular pastries at the court of Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq in Delhi. The spiced potato filling that defines the most beloved Indian version could not have existed until after the 16th century, when the potato arrived from the Americas. That adaptation — potato and peas with cumin, coriander, and green chilli — proved so perfectly suited to the Indian palate that it became iconic worldwide. Today, over eight centuries after the samosa reached South Asia, it remains one of the subcontinent's most universally eaten street foods.