A meat samosa, or keema samosa, is a thin pastry triangle filled with spiced minced beef that has been cooked until dry, cooled, and mixed with raw onion and fresh coriander, then deep-fried until the pastry is crisp and blistered. This recipe makes about 30 with ready-made samosa pastry sheets.
One thing decides whether it works: the filling has to be dry and completely cold before it touches the pastry. Wet or warm mince softens the sheets and splits the seams in the oil. Get that right and the folding is the only skill left to learn.
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Recipe
Meat Samosa (Beef Keema Samosas)
Ingredients
Method
- Put the beef, ginger-garlic paste, cumin seeds, coriander seeds, chilli powder, chilli flakes, turmeric if using, salt and the water in a wide pan over medium-high heat. Break the mince up with the back of a spoon as it cooks, pressing out every lump.
- Keep cooking and stirring until the water has gone, no pink remains and the mince is dry and crumbly with only a sheen of fat. Stir in the garam masala, then spread the mince on a tray and leave it until completely cold.
- Stir the raw onion, coriander leaves, green chilli and lemon juice, if using, into the cold mince. Taste and add salt if it needs it.
- Mix the flour and water into a thick, smooth paste, or beat the egg white. Keep the pastry sheets covered with a damp cloth while you work.
- Fold one end of a pastry strip diagonally into a triangle, fold again to make a pocket, and fill it with a heaped tablespoon of filling. Keep folding along the strip in triangles, brush the last flap with paste and press it shut.
- Heat the oil to 170 to 185°C (340 to 365°F). Fry a few samosas at a time, turning them, until golden and crisp, about 3 to 8 minutes depending on the pastry. Drain on a rack or kitchen paper and serve hot.
What a meat samosa is
A meat samosa is a fried pastry triangle with a minced meat filling instead of the potato and pea filling of the vegetable samosa. In Urdu the filling is keema, minced meat, which is why the same snack is sold as keema samosa.
Beef is the meat in most of the recipes compared for this page, and lamb works the same way. The version here is the dry, potato-free filling folded in thin sheets, the style that the three recipes this card is built from share: Chai and Churros, Little Spice Jar and Love.Food.Life.Alchemy. If you already make keema naan or chapli kabab, the spicing will feel familiar.
The step most people get wrong
Folding warm or wet filling is the mistake that ruins meat samosas. Every recipe used for the card cooks the mince until the liquid has gone, and the two that say when to add the onion and coriander wait until the meat has cooled completely.
Here is what right looks like. The mince is in small, separate crumbs, there is no pink left and no liquid in the pan, only a thin sheen of fat. Spread it on a tray so it cools quickly and evenly. Only then stir in the raw onion and coriander, which stay fresh and slightly crunchy inside the pastry.
Choose lean mince. Chai and Churros calls for lean beef and Little Spice Jar for 93 to 95 percent lean, and neither adds oil to the filling, because fatty mince leaves grease that soaks the pastry from the inside.
How to make the keema filling
Make samosa filling by cooking minced beef with ginger-garlic paste, whole cumin and coriander seeds, chilli and salt until it is dry, then cooling it and folding in raw onion, coriander leaves and green chilli. Garam masala goes in at the end of cooking.
Two of the three recipes add a little water to the mince so it cooks through and breaks into fine crumbs before the water evaporates. Break up every lump with the back of the spoon while it is still wet; once the meat dries, the lumps set.
Heat is a range, not a rule. The card gives ½ teaspoon each of chilli powder and chilli flakes as the default. Chai and Churros uses 2 teaspoons of flakes on their own, and the green chilli ranges from one to four across the sources. Taste the cooled filling before you fold, because it cannot be adjusted afterwards.
Some quantities had no two-of-three agreement, so the source of each is named here. The whole cumin and coriander seeds and the ½ cup of coriander leaves follow Chai and Churros; the turmeric and lemon juice are optional and come from Little Spice Jar; the 60 ml of water follows Love.Food.Life.Alchemy.
How to fold samosas with pastry sheets
Fold a samosa by turning a long strip of pastry into a triangular pocket, filling it, then folding the strip over and over in triangles until it is used up and sealing the last flap with paste. It is the same fold as a paper flag.
- Lay one strip lengthwise in front of you and fold the bottom corner up diagonally to make a triangle.
- Fold that triangle up along the strip once more, so it forms a pocket open at the top.
- Spoon in a heaped tablespoon of filling and press it into the corners. Do not overfill; the seams split in the oil.
- Keep folding the filled triangle along the strip, then brush the last flap with flour paste and press it flat.
The seal is either a paste of flour and water, as Chai and Churros uses, or egg, as the other two do. Flour paste keeps the samosas egg-free and holds well; egg is quicker. Keep the sheets you are not using under a damp cloth, because dry sheets crack at the folds.
How hot to fry meat samosas
Fry meat samosas at 170 to 185°C (340 to 365°F). Little Spice Jar fries at 365°F, Food.com at 350°F and Serious Eats at 340°F, so that range covers all three. The filling is already cooked, so the oil only has to crisp the pastry and heat the middle.
Fry a few at a time and turn them so they brown evenly. Thin sheets take about 3 minutes in the Allrecipes and Food.com recipes, while Little Spice Jar, using a double layer of spring roll sheets, gives 5 to 8. If they colour in under a minute, the oil is too hot and the pastry will be dark outside and soft inside.
Meat samosas, step by step
Cook the mince with the spices and a little water.- Cook it dry, then spread it out to cool completely.
- Raw onion, coriander and chilli go into the cold mince.
- Make the flour paste and keep the pastry covered.
- Fold the strip into a pocket, fill, fold and seal.
- Fry a few at a time until golden, then drain.
Shop-bought pastry or homemade dough
Shop-bought sheets give the flat, paper-thin home style; homemade dough gives a thicker, bubbled, cone-shaped samosa. Both are the same dish with different pastry.
For the dough style, Munaty Cooking and Serious Eats both rub fat into flour, knead it with water, rest it, roll it into rounds, cut each round in half and shape every half into a cone before filling. It takes far longer, and the pastry is the reason to do it.
If you cannot find samosa pastry sheets, spring roll wrappers are the substitute the other two recipes use: Little Spice Jar cuts each square into three strips and doubles them for strength.
The shorter route: baked meat samosas
You can bake meat samosas instead of frying them. Life’s Ambrosia folds the filling into puff pastry, brushes it with egg wash and bakes at 400°F (200°C) for 12 to 15 minutes.
What you lose is the pastry. Puff pastry bakes flaky and soft-centred, not thin and shattering, and the parcels come out as rectangles rather than triangles. It is a good party bake; it is not the same samosa.
Make ahead and freeze
Meat samosas freeze well uncooked. Little Spice Jar sets the folded samosas in a single layer on a tray, freezes them for 3 to 4 hours, then moves them into a freezer bag, which stops them sticking together.
The filling can also be made ahead and kept in the fridge until you fold, which has the side benefit of guaranteeing it is cold.
Storage and food safety
Cook the minced beef until no pink remains; the USDA safe minimum internal temperature for ground beef is 71°C (160°F). Keep fried leftovers in the fridge and eat them within 3 to 4 days, which is the FoodSafety.gov guideline for cooked leftovers.
What to serve with meat samosas
Meat samosas are eaten hot with a dipping sauce, most often a green mint and coriander chutney. Love.Food.Life.Alchemy pairs them with a mint chutney, Food.com suggests sweet chilli sauce, mango chutney or plum sauce, and Serious Eats serves them with a hot and sweet chilli sauce. Tamarind chutney is the other common choice.
On a snack table they sit naturally beside other fried things, such as chicken pakora.
Questions people ask
What is a meat samosa called?
Keema samosa. Keema means minced meat, so a beef keema samosa and a meat samosa are the same thing.
Can vegetarians eat samosas?
Vegetarians can eat vegetable samosas, the potato and pea kind, but not these. Meat samosas are filled with minced beef or lamb.
Can you give me a simple recipe for beef sambusa?
The recipe on this page works for a beef sambusa: cook spiced minced beef until dry, cool it, fold it into thin pastry triangles with onion and coriander, and fry until crisp.
Should I add potato to a meat samosa filling?
You can. Allrecipes, Food.com and Munaty Cooking add potato and peas to the beef, which stretches the filling and makes it softer. The card here leaves them out, as the three recipes it is built from do.
Why did my samosas burst in the oil?
Usually the filling was warm or wet, the samosa was overfilled, or the last flap was not sealed. Cool the filling completely, use about a tablespoon, and press the paste-brushed flap flat.
Can I fry samosas from frozen?
None of the recipes used for this page gives a time for frying from frozen, so this page does not either. Little Spice Jar freezes them uncooked in a single layer before bagging them.
