Meet the Samosadilla

Samosas are one of those top-tier foods that I have never bothered trying to cook. Mostly this comes down to deep-frying. I really dislike deep-frying at home. It stinks up my apartment, it’s annoying to clean up and dispose of the oil correctly, and since I’m almost never cooking for a huge number of people, it’s not efficient. Heating up the quarts and quarts of oil to fry four samosas for two people? Life’s too short, even during a quarantine.

I had resigned myself to eating samosas only when I ordered Indian takeout until I watched this video from Cooking YouTube’s avuncular major-domo Chef John:

In this recipe, you make the samosa filling same as you would normally, but skip the dough and deep-frying. Instead, you put the filling inside a flour tortilla and fry that in a tablespoon or two of oil. 

Now, it’s not as good as a real samosa, but it’s still pretty outstanding. The filling is spicy and flavorful (and you can adjust the potato texture and spice level to your liking), and the tortilla takes on this flaky, crispy-chewy texture that’s not far off from the genuine article. 

I love this recipe because the ingredients are cheap and common (you might have all of them in your kitchen already), and there's no messy deep-fryer clean-up. Plus, you can make a big batch of the filling and keep that for a few days in your fridge. Whenever you get a samosa craving, you can nuke a serving of it in the microwave (this is necessary; if you don't microwave it, the tortilla will get crisp and start to burn before the cold filling heats through), oil up a pan, throw in a tortilla—5 minutes later you have a hot, fresh pseudo-samosa. A pseudomosa. I am sorry. 

Chef John’s recipe also includes the mint-cilantro sauce, but no tamarind sauce. I’ve been using a storebought jar of Patak’s chutney in its place, and it’s not a bad substitute, but if you have a good tamarind sauce recipe, I'd use that.