Samsa made from puff pastry with various fillings is a delicious national Uzbek dish. Traditionally, samsa is made in a tandoor, but now most cooks bake it in the oven. The classic Uzbek samsa begins with the preparation of the dough. Puff pastry for samsa is the first and main condition for obtaining a delicious dish.
Dough preparation
The ingredients for a classic puff pastry are as follows: milk - 250 ml, flour - 0.5 kg, egg - 1 pc., Salt - 0.5 tbsp. spoons. The recipe itself is quite simple: you should mix milk, egg and salt in a convenient container, beat a little until a homogeneous mass is obtained. Next, gradually adding flour, you need to knead the usual hard dough. After that, you can leave the dough for 20-40 minutes to "rest" so that it becomes less sticky and more flaky.
Preparing the filling
While the dough "reaches", you need to prepare the filling. Uzbek samsa is traditionally made from chopped lamb with the addition of onions, salt and black pepper. In some cases, lamb was replaced by beef or chicken. At the moment, the most popular filler for pies of this kind is chicken meat (you can also use inexpensive pork). People who do not like meat can make quite classic samsa with pumpkin or pies "based on samsa" with cabbage, mushrooms, cottage cheese, herbs and cheese.
For the available amount of dough, you need to take 0.5 kg of beef, 2-3 onions (the amount of onion depends on the preferences of the cook), salt and pepper to taste. Also, you can add various Uzbek spices (turmeric or cumin), which give the meat a spicy taste. Chunks of beef should be medium in size (too large will not cook in the oven, and small will not produce enough broth). To add juiciness to each samsa, you can add a small piece of butter during cooking.
Making pies
The resulting dough must be rolled into rolls and then cut into small round pieces, which are then rolled into circles. In the resulting blanks, you must carefully lay the filling. From the resulting circle with a filling, you can create any shape for the samsa that you want: a triangle, a hemisphere, etc. The shape of a triangle is considered historically correct. To give a golden hue and an authentic Uzbek look, you can coat samsa with a beaten egg, and then sprinkle with sesame seeds. Then the pies should be put in a tandoor (or a regular oven) heated to a temperature of 200-230 ° C.
Samsa is baked for about 40-50 minutes (if the filling is beef or lamb) and about half an hour when making pies with chicken, mushrooms or other filling.
