Bun (Chicken) Samosa

Although I’m not much of a fried and junk food eater now, I have loved it for years. Specially since my Mom never encouraged it and didn’t serve much at home! Typical case of wanting what I couldn’t have!!

One of my favourite indulgences was a bun-samosa. Yes, as simple as it sounds. Take a burger bun, toast it, spread some green chutney and ketchup on it and smush a store/ halwai-bought samosa into it and gobble it up! I learned this from my first cook book and loved it from the word “go”.

AK had been goading me to make chicken samosas for a while, so I decided to make a dinner out of it by making the chicken samosa from scratch and having it as a bun-samosa!

It was much simpler than I thought it was going to be! I watched a few youtube videos to get the hang of shaping the samosa, but the rest I put together as I went along!

Here’s what I used for 4 large samosas (I assume the same quantity can be used for 10-12 small appetizer sized ones):

For the Crust:
1 cup maida/ all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp red chilly powder
2 tbsp ghee (you can use vegetable oil/ butter/ margerine)
Cold water, as required
(I would have liked to use 1/2 tsp of ajwain/carrom/caraway seeds but AK hates them)

For the Filling:
250 gm minced chicken
1 large onion, chopped finely
4-5 green chillies, chopped finely
4-5 cloves garlic, minced/ crushed
1″ piece of fresh ginger, minced/ grated/ crushed
3 tbsp dhania/ coriander/ cilantro, chopped finely
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garam masala
2 tbsp oil
Oil for deep frying

Here’s how I made them:

I measured out the flour in a paraat/ mixing bowl…

Added the salt…

And the red chilli powder…

I would have added the ajwain at this point too. But I ignored the step and went ahead with the ghee!!

Then I rubbed the mixture together with my fingers to resemble crumbs (not as crumbly as pie dough because the fat/flour ratio is much lower here, but a similar effect)…

Then I took some cold water, little by little, and incorporated it into the mix, until it came together as a soft dough…

Then I kneaded and punched and rolled the dough for a few more minutes and finally shaped it into a ball…

I covered the dough with a damp cloth and let it rest while I got the filling ready…

First, heated the 2 tbsp oil in a kadhai/ wok. While the oil was heating, I crushed the ginger and garlic in my mortar-pestle…

I added the chopped onions to the oil and fried them…

Once the onions wilted, I chopped and added the green chillies…

I also added the ginger-garlic paste…

The salt & garam masala (you can also add curry/ sambhar powder or any other seasoning you like…)

After stirring and roasting the whole mix for about a minute or so, I added the minced chicken…

I incorporated the mince into the masala and cooked it on an open high flame for about 2 mins…

Then I lowered the heat to medium-low and covered the kadhai, allowing the chicken to cook for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally…

When it was done, I gave it one last stir and then placed the kadhai on the dining table, under the full blast of the fan to cool it as quickly as possible!!

I don’t have a picture of stirring the dhania in, but it wilted so quickly that all you can see are some specks of green in there! Anyhow, once the chicken was cool, I placed another kadhai with the oil for deep frying to heat. While the oil was heating, I began to prepare the samosas for frying…

I divided the dough into half and rolled them into balls…

Flouring the chakla-belan (rolling stone and pin) and my hands, I rolled out each ball into a circle, about 1/8″ thick…

Using a knife, I divided the circle in half, making 2 semi-circles…

Taking one of the semi-circles, I rolled it into a sort of cone by joining the straight sides, overlapping them by about 1/2 inch. You can use a little water to press and seal the edge…

Then using a spoon, I placed about 1/4 of the chicken filling (more like 1/5th because I ended up with enough filling leftover for 1 more samosa) into the cone…

Then placing it back on the chakla, I folded the longer edge to seal the samosa (yes I need much more practice with this step to make the samosas neater!) and pressed down on the edge with the tines of a fork…

This is what the first one looked like…

I repeated with the other 3 and got ready to fry! I tipped the samosas, 2 at a time, into the hot oil…

I fried them, flipping once, to fry them to an even golden colour (I have no idea what caused the little blisters in the crust but I WILL figure it out. It did nothing to alter the taste though, I promise). I lifted them out and drained them on a slotted spoon before placing them on paper towels to drain out the remaining oil…