These Onion Samosa are flaky little parcels filled with caramelised onions, roasted chickpea flour and spice powders. The rough recipe is based off a Tarla Dalal mini onion deep fried samosa recipe from here.
I’ve used a mix of wholemeal and plain self raising flours for the pastry case and water sautéed the onion to get a beautiful caramelised flavour. All the spice powders and chickpea flour A.K.A. Besan are dry roasted before mixing with the caramelised onion mixture.
The Tarla Dalal recipe also has a great technique to roll out little balls of dough into flat circles that are then cut into halves. Add a teaspoon full of filling on the semicircular halves. The semicircles are then folded into quarters giving the samosa parcels their widely recognised triangular appearance. Using a little bit of water to seal the edges worked well.
I baked the samosa parcels in my Airfryer at 180 degrees C for 16 – 18 minutes, for the perfectly browned crisp crust. This might change if using an oven of course, and the samosa will need flipping halfway to ensure a golden crust all around.
Another tip here is to use ice cold water very sparingly, to make the pastry dough in place of oil. The dough should be firm and rather dry, not soft as this gives us soggy not crisp samosas!
Ingredients For The Onion Samosa Dough
1/2 cup Wholemeal Self Raising Flour
1/2 cup Plain Self Raising Flour
3 – 5 Tablespoons Ice Cold Water, use very sparingly just to bring the dough together
Salt, to taste, if using. (I forgot & the taste was fine)
Ingredients For The Onion Samosa Filling
1 large Brown Onion, minced finely
1.5 teaspoon Cumin Seeds, roasted
1 teaspoon Fennel Seeds, lightly roasted
2 teaspoons Coriander Seeds, lightly roasted
1/4 teaspoon Red Chilli Powder, reduce if wanting to reduce the heat
1/4 teaspoon Black Pepper, freshly ground powder
1 teaspoon Dried Mango Powder A.K.A. “Amchur”
1/2 teaspoon Turmeric powder
3 Tablespoons of Chickpea Flour A.K.A. Besan
Salt, to taste
Directions For the Dough
Combine all the flours in a large mixing bowl and knead into a firm dough using enough ice cold water. A few cracks are fine. Set the dough aside to rest under a cover.
Directions For the Filling
- Heat a non-stick pan and add the cumin seeds. Remove when they smell aromatic in a couple of minutes.
- Next dry roast the coriander and fennel seeds. Cool and then powder the whole spices.
- Add the dried mango powder, black pepper and turmeric to the dry spice mixture.
- Dry roast the chickpea flour until golden brown and not smelling raw anymore. Remove and add to the powdered spices.
- Add the minced onion to the pan and cook until smelling delicious and golden brown. Add spoonfuls of water as required to prevent the onion from sticking to the pan and burning.
- Once the onion is caramelised then slowly stir in the chickpea flour – spice mixture. Mix well.
- Season with salt. Leave aside to cool.
- Using wet hands knead the dough until smooth and divide into lime sized balls.
- Roll out the dough as thin as possible into circular discs as if for Roti or Tortillas.
- Use a pizza cutter to cut into 2 halves.
- Place a spoonful of the onion mixture in the centre of the semicircles.
- Use a bit of water to seal the edges and set under a clean tea towel.
- Place the samosa parcels in the Airfryer basket making sure they aren’t sticking to each other.
- Airfry at 180 degrees C for 16 to 18 minutes.
- Cool on a wire rack before serving.
Store in an air tight box, these disappear rather quickly and may not needing to be storage at all. Taste great with tomato ketchup as a dipping sauce.
If you like this recipe, please see here for an easy Quinoa Burger Patty recipe idea 😊
