Uzbeks are very fond of flour, especially these triangular pies with meat (samsa).
Properly cooked samsa should be crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. Therefore, you need to invest love and have patience in order to cook a real Uzbek samsa.
Traditionally, samsa is made from homemade puff pastry and cooked in a tandoor. Today, tandoor is replaced with ovens for Uzbek women, but in the villages they still cook in the old fashioned way.
The Uzbeks make puff pastry without yeast and mostly unleavened. Only premium flour is taken for the dough. Prepare the dough in salted water and combine with melted butter.
Salt gives the dough plasticity, so it stretches well and does not tear. But butter makes the dough airy and crispy.
This puff pastry recipe is considered classic and correct.
Unleavened dough, how to cook?
1. Sift 500 gr. flour in a cup and make a small depression in the flour. Stir 1 tsp in a glass of warm water. l. salt.
We add water in parts to the flour, and knead the tough dough.
2. We spread the dough on the table and continue to knead for another 10-15 minutes. The dough should be soft.
3. Cover the dough with cling film and leave to rest for 15-20 minutes.
4. We repeat the same thing with the dough again (you can grease the dough with vegetable oil to make it easier to work with the dough).
An Uzbek woman told the secrets of making real Uzbek mantas (from rolling dough to sculpting mantas)
How to cook puff pastry for samsa?
1. We roll out the dough very, very thinly, even if it breaks in places (it's not scary), grease it well with warm melted butter.
2. We collect the dough into a roll, pulling and pressing the dough a little so that the roll turns out to be dense.
3. We twist the roll, wrap it in foil and put it in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours.
4. After 2-3 hours, unfold the roll and cut into strips 5 cm wide.
5. We turn each strip into a cake, pressing on it with your hand like this.
6. Roll out the cake 1-2 cm thick (no need to roll it thinly). You should get such a cake with a pattern in the center.
The resulting cakes can be frozen and prepared for future use.
The correct recipe for a juicy meat filling - Uzbeks cook everything with it (manti, khanum, samsa, pasties and even dumplings)
Puff pastry dough, how to cook and make blanks?
1. Roll out the unleavened dough thinly, grease with melted butter, fold and grease the dry edges again.
2. We pass over the entire surface of the rectangle with a rolling pin, first along and then across. Then we grease and fold again, and we also go through with a rolling pin.
3. We take a piece of parchment paper, put the dough on it, cover it with another sheet of paper on top, fold it in half and put it in the freezer for storage.
Samsa from such a dough turns out to be crispy, juicy and tasty. Bon Appetit!
If you liked the article, then put your finger up andsubscribeto my channel.
You can find my other articles HERE