Samsa from puff pastry with various fillings is a delicious national Uzbek dish. Traditionally, samsa is made in tandoor, but now most chefs bake it in the oven. Classical Uzbek samsa begins with the preparation of the dough. Puff pastry for samsa is the first and main condition for obtaining a delicious dish.
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Cooking dough
The ingredients for the classic puff pastry are as follows: milk - 250 ml, flour - 0.5 kg, egg - 1 pc., Salt - 0.5 tbsp. spoons. The cooking recipe itself is quite simple: you should mix milk, egg and salt in a convenient dish, beat a little until a homogeneous mass is obtained. Next, gradually adding flour, you need to knead the usual cool dough. After that, you can leave the dough for 20-40 minutes to “rest”, so that it becomes less sticky and more layered.
Preparing the filling
While the dough "reaches", you need to prepare the filling. Uzbek samsa was traditionally made from minced lamb with onions, salt and black pepper. In some cases, lamb was replaced with beef or chicken. At the moment, the most popular filler for pies of this kind has become 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 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 zira), which give the meat a spicy taste. The pieces of beef should be medium in size (too large will not have time to cook in the oven, and small ones will not produce enough broth). To add juiciness to each samsa during cooking, you can add a small piece of butter.