Baked Samosa

The Family has been concerned about overdoing the fried food for a while now. When the lockdown started and our physical activity fell another notch, we became non-frying fetishists. As part of that year-long effort, last week we decided to bake samosas. We’d been freezing samosas to be fried later for some time now, and we took out six of the flat-folded ones which had a nice kheema filling and brushed on a touch of oil. A touch, after all, is the absolute maximum that you want if you are trying to cut down the extra calories that the oil would provide.

I was all for setting the thermostat at 200 Celsius and baking for about 7 to 8 minutes a side. I was trumped by a recipe that The Family found on the net which claimed 180 Celsius and baking for 5 minutes a side. I was skeptical. Baking times depend on many factors. The starting temperature of the thing being baked changes times quite a bit. Since the room temperature was lower than usual, and we’d not let the filled samosas sit out for too long, I thought it was going to take longer than what the recipe states. The time also depends on the size of the oven you use, since it seems to determine how close to or far from the source of heat you can place your tray (ideally it should not). It turned out that these took inordinately long, almost 10 minutes a side.

The next time we will turn up the thermostat a little further, perhaps place the tray closer to the bottom of the oven, and remember to take the samosas out of the freezer as early in the morning as possible. I’m looking for that sweet spot when the whole process takes about 15 minutes. And perhaps we will try a whiff of oil instead of the touch.