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Peanut-Free – Page 23 – surviving the food allergy apocalypse (archive)

surviving the food allergy apocalypse (archive)

Tag: Peanut-Free

Homemade Beef Jerky
Beef Jerky. Photo by J. Andrews

I don’t know that I was aware that beef jerky was a commercial product until college. It pretty much showed up in the Westerns I was forced to watch as a kid, in pioneer books, and about once a year out of the oven, right before the oven got cleaned. Homemade beef jerky was a tradition. Once, my mother tried to send me some in grad school. As far as I can tell, the delivery person literally kicked the package into my tiny mailbox, shattering the protective jar into a whole batch of fantastic jerky. I still mourn that poor jar of wasted tasty goodness (that was, I think, about 15 years ago).

Thinking about food for road trips and vacations, hikes or picnics, jerky is a pretty good staple. If it got people out to the Plains or the west coast by wagon train, it can probably get you through a long drive or a weekend at a remote cottage, and it’s definitely an airport security-safe food. I will say I have no idea how long this is shelf-stable, but I’m pretty sure that the last jar was hidden for a few months at home. So at least a few months?

Jerky is pretty easy to make. It’s a bit time-consuming, but most of that is just waiting around and doing nothing. My plan usually starts with throwing a frozen flank steak in the fridge to thaw all day while I’m at work. That night I make the marinade and slice the meat. The next morning, I stir/flip the meat in the marinade. When I get home from work, I throw it in the oven. So, yeah, it’s a two-day process, but maybe 45 minutes of that 48 hours is active work. One pound takes up about one oven rack, so if you like this, it’s easily doubled without overloading your oven. Know that you will likely need to and want to clean your oven afterward.

This is a variation on our family recipe, altered to removed the soy and a few other ingredients that can be problematic with allergies. If you can have soy, you can use it here — remove all other salt in the recipe; if you need to be gluten-free, use GF tamari, but to me it tastes quite a bit saltier than regular soy sauce. Adjust accordingly. I have not tried this with coconut aminos, but let me know how it works if you do. You will want to make the faux soy sauce (linked below) beforehand if you’re using it, but it does not take long.

Jerky in process. It isn’t pretty, but it tastes good.

Homemade Beef Jerky
- 1 lb. flank steak
- 1/2 cup dry sherry or dry wine
- 1/2 cup faux soy sauce (I used this recipe without the fish sauce and with a bit more salt, closer to 1/2 teaspoon, but I was doing it by taste at that point)
- 1 Tablespoon natural sugar (regular table sugar will work, but unprocessed sugarcane adds better flavor, likely from the natural molasses content)
- 2 teaspoons garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 teaspoon dry mustard powder
- 1/2 teaspoon celery salt (use crushed celery seed if you are using soy sauce or tamari)
- 1 teaspoon lime juice (lemon is probably okay, I just have a lot of limes right now)
- 1/2 teaspoon hot sauce of your choice (absolutely optional)
- salt to taste
Freeze your meat for at least an hour. Alternately, take meat from the freezer and let thaw about 8 hours in the fridge. Having partially frozen flank steak will allow you to cut it more thinly and evenly.

Trim the fat from the flank steak. Then slice into approximately 1/8-inch slices, with the grain of the meat. Or, you know, do your best to slice it thinly, period, and call it “hand-cut” and “artisinal.” This is what I do.

In a glass baking dish, combine the ingredients for the marinade and whisk or stir with a fork until the sugar is dissolved thoroughly. Taste it and adjust the salt. You want this marinade to be salty, but not overly so. Your jerky will be less salty than the marinade.

Add the meat strips and stir to fully coat and mostly submerge. Cover and refrigerate at least overnight (again, I usually do overnight, stir, and most of the next day — that’s just how it works in my schedule).

Lay your meat out directly on the oven rack.

Turn your oven down to the lowest setting (mine goes down to 170°F), and leave the oven cracked. Let the jerky dry out for 5-7 hours — you probably know what jerky should look and feel like, so test it at 5 hours. 6 usually works for how I cut the meat and how my oven works. After one or two batches, you’ll know where this stands for you, too.

Remove jerky to an airtight container, glass if you have it, and travel on.

Beef Jerky is ready for its close up. Photo by J. Andrews
June 16, 2014
Watermelon White Wine Sorbet or Ice Pops
Watermelon White Wine Sorbet or Ice Pops

Sorbet is one of the things I miss terribly because almost all of the commercial versions have corn in some form in them. This is a fairly easy recipe, making it perfect for this weekend, when I was going away for my 20th college reunion. Also, just as a side note, you could also sub out the watermelon for a quart of strawberries or a quart of peeled sliced peaches. I bet they’d be awesome too.

Warning: Before you make sorbet, you need an ice cream maker and if it’s like mine, you need to have frozen the insert ahead of time. Also, it helps to make the simple syrup the day before and let it cool in the fridge overnight. If you’re just making ice pops, just cool the simple syrup to room temperature before mixing it with the watermelon juice.

Watermelon White Wine Sorbet

Makes about 10 or so half cup servings (who ever eats just half a cup though??)
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- 1 1/4 cups water
- 1/2 cup of chilled white wine (anything will do, but a nice bright citrus-y Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio would work well. Also, don’t spend a ton of money on this wine, you’re mixing it with watermelon and sugar. Or if you don’t want to use wine because you’re unsure of the wheat or corn ingredients in your wine, you could use a vodka made only from potatoes, but I’d cut it down to a quarter cup. Or not, if you’re not driving. Also, if you don’t want to use alcohol, substitute the wine with some safe-for-you lime or lemon or other fruit juice.)
- 1 quart of watermelon, peeled and cubed
Again, make sure that your ice cream maker is ready to go according to the manufacturer’s instructions, whether that means your insert is frozen or whatever else you might have to do.

The day before you are going to do your sorbet, make the simple syrup. Place the sugar and water in a sauce pan and bring it to a boil without stirring. Turn it down to a low simmer and simmer until all the sugar has dissolved to make a simple syrup. Pour the simple syrup into a heat resistant bowl and put it into the fridge to cool.

Place watermelon in a food processor or blender (in batches if necessary) and blend until smooth. Pour the liquid through a strainer to remove any seeds making sure that you press any large fruit bits remaining through the strainer. You don’t want to waste any of the watermelon. Add the wine and the simple syrup to the watermelon mixture and mix until combined thoroughly.

Follow your ice cream maker’s instructions to make the sorbet, or make ice pops with the mixture by using paper or plastic cups or ice pop molds and placing them in the freezer until frozen.

Hope you enjoy it!

Watermelon White Wine Sorbet or Ice Pops
June 9, 2014
Macadamia-Pistachio-Cherry Raw Balls
Macadamia-Pistachio-Cherry Raw Balls. Photo by J. Andrews

Apologies to the nut-allergic. These are not for you. Come back next week for a nut-free recipe? For those of you who can have nuts, these are for you.

I rely on a few travel snacks to get me through times when emergency rations are necessary. Lärabars are one of those snacks, and I usually have one in my bag (as well as a few at the office). But because they are “emergency” food that I eat several times a month, I frankly get a bit bored of the few flavors I like. I wanted to see if I could make something along the same lines, using things I had in the house, and have some snacks for this week at work. Dried fruit and nut things have a good combination of sugar, protein and fat that, for me, at least, makes for a good snack that knocks down hunger for an appropriate amount of time. You know, until your next snack. I eat on the hobbit schedule.

Between occasional trips to Trader Joe’s and our local natural foods store, I have a great selection of seeds, nuts, and dried fruits. Sometimes they get used for cookies or oatmeal toppings or an attempt at trail mix (which I always think I’m going to like more than I actually do), but mostly, buying them sounds like a good idea. I pulled everything out of the cabinet for taste-testing before deciding on this combo of macadamia nuts, pistachios, and cherries, with some dates and cacao nibs thrown in. The macadamias and pistachios are pretty creamy, and the cherries are tart, and the combination works out well.

My version might not be fully raw — I don’t know how the cherries or dates were dried — but if that’s important for you, find raw versions.

Macadamia-Pistachio-Cherry Raw Balls. Photo by J. Andrews

Macadamia-Pistachio-Cherry Raw Balls

makes 16
- 1/4 cup raw pistachios, shelled
- 1/2 cup raw macadamia nuts
- 2 pitted Medjool dates
- 1/4 cup dried Montmorency cherries (pretty sure any dried cherries will work, but I like the tartness of these)
- 2 Tablespoons raw cacao nibs
Rough chop the pistachios in the food processor, and set aside.

Add the macadamia nuts and the Medjool dates to the food processor, and process until you’ve made a nut butter. Add the cherries, and pulse them into the mixture. Add the pistachios back in, and the cacao nibs. Pulse to mix.

Dump the mixture out onto a sheet of parchment paper and knead it together. Chill at least 10 -15 minutes in the fridge, wrapped tightly in the parchment. Roll into balls, about 1/2 a Tablespoon each. Store tightly covered in the fridge.

Macadamia-Pistachio-Cherry Raw Balls
June 2, 2014
Sourdough Waffles (Gluten-free & Vegan)
Sourdough Waffles (Gluten-free & Vegan)

As some of you know, I’ve been experimenting with gluten-free sourdough breads. And since I have gluten-free sourdough starter that I now need to use because you have to keep feeding it to keep it alive, and there’s only so much bread one person can eat as my husband is diabetic and gluten-free bread is not particularly helpful to his blood sugar, I need to find other ways to use it up. Someone in one of the fermenting groups on Facebook recently mentioned sourdough starter waffles, and I was off and running. I found a couple of recipes, but many of them had things I can’t have, so I’ve played around and substituted until I’ve gotten something I’m pretty happy with. Also, as a side note, these freeze great. You can make up a batch and when they cool, put a layer of parchment paper or plastic wrap in between them, put them in a gallon size zip top freezer bag, and put them in the freezer. You can warm them up in a toaster or in the oven on a baking rack when you’re ready to eat them.

You do have to make the starter ahead of time. I used this post from Art of Gluten-Free Baking to begin my starter. I started using sorghum flour when I was making the bread, but I had moved over to feeding it oat flour before making these waffles (I was running out of sorghum). Also, I cheated and didn’t do the cabbage leaf thing to get wild yeast, I just used a pinch of a safe for me commercial yeast. It worked fine, but do what makes you happy.

If you don’t have safe oat flour, you can take gluten-free certified oats and grind them in a blender or food processor.

Sourdough Waffles (Gluten-free & Vegan)

Makes 6-7 waffles.
- 1 cup of gluten-free sourdough starter
- 1 cup of non-dairy milk (I used homemade brown rice milk)
- 2 Tablespoons of grape seed or olive oil
- 1/4 cup of applesauce
- 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract (Here’s a bunch of recipes for vanilla extract, make sure to use safe alcohol if corn or wheat are an issue for you. I used Luksusowa Vodka because it’s made only from potatoes, where some vodkas may also use grain or corn.)
- 1/2 cup of oat flour
- 1/2 cup of glutinous rice flour
- 1/4 cup of tapioca starch
- 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
- 1 teaspoon of baking powder (For corn free baking powder you can use this recipe)
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 2 Tablespoons of brown sugar
- 1/8 teaspoon of cinnamon
- 1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg
Plug in your waffle iron and pre-heat it. If it has a temperature setting, I find that the highest temperature works best for gluten-free.

Add oat flour, glutinous rice flour, tapioca starch, baking soda, baking powder, salt, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg to a mixing bowl and whisk it until thoroughly mixed. Now add your wet ingredients, the sourdough starter, non-dairy milk, grape seed oil, applesauce and vanilla extract to the bowl and mix until well combined, but there will be a few lumps.

Batter, mixed but not too mixed.

Pour the appropriate amount batter on your waffle iron, for mine it’s between a 1/3 and a 1/2 cup of batter, and cook according to your waffle iron’s directions. But I do find that I like to let it go a little longer after the indicator light has gone out until the steam stops to get nice really crispy waffles.

Hope you enjoy them!

Sourdough Waffles (Gluten-free & Vegan)
May 26, 2014
Bacon "Cheddar" Muffins (Gluten-free, Egg-free, Dairy-free)
Allergy-friendly bacon “cheddar” muffins. Photo by J. Andrews

I started baking with cakes; it was my first form of cooking. I worked my way through the fancy cakes in my mother’s Southern Living cookbooks from age 10 until the end of college, so as a housewarming present for my first apartment, she bought me the newest version of the cookbook — it’s pretty good for basics, with some cook-to-impress recipes, and it’s chock full of desserts. However, as much as I love cake, as an adult who was suddenly in charge of feeding myself three meals a day, I pretty quickly discovered muffins. They’re pretty much breakfast cupcakes, right? Our college snack bar had really good biscuits, with every possible permutation of the classic breakfast ingredients — eggs, bacon, cheese, sausage. Between the SL cookbook and the biscuits, I can definitely forgive the southern version of green beans (which, in my totally untrained culinary opinion, are just boiled beyond death). Anyway, a savory breakfast muffin is almost the best of all breakfast worlds — like a breakfast biscuit, but in portable, make-ahead for the week form. All it needs for absolute perfection is some way to incorporate hash browns.

Geez. All that rambling to say that, basically, this is an awesome breakfast that, once I remembered it existed, I really needed to reform the recipe in order to make it safe for me to eat today. In order to make this one, you need to have safe-for-you versions of bacon, cheddar cheese, and non-dairy milk. I have never used Bac-Os, and I could not find an ingredient list on that page, but I seem to recall them featured in an “Accidentally Vegan” column in Veg News a few years ago, and they are soy-based. In a quick glance at the website, it appears you can bake with them. I think they might work in this recipe, and that would make these muffins vegan, but not soy-free. If anyone tries that, will you please let me know?

All the magic is in the crumbs. Photo by J. Andrews

Allergy-Friendly Bacon “Cheddar” Muffins

Makes 10 muffins and probably a bit more than double the amount of flour mix you need for this recipe.

First, make a flour mix by weight. This one is based on the Gluten-Free Girl’s Whole Grain Flour Mix formula (and just in case you think it might also be the magic muffin solution, it doesn’t work well for blueberry muffins. I tried it and was disappointed. It is perfect for these savory muffins, though.):
- 110 g sorghum flour
- 115 g quinoa flour
- 125 g brown rice flour
- 75 g tapioca starch
- 75 g potato starch
Cook about 10 strips of bacon (or, if you’re me, fill your cast iron skillet, and call it good. That’s between 5 and 8 strips of bacon, depending on how wide they are and how creative I can arrange them).

Mix the dry ingredients:
- 1 3/4 cups flour mix
- 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 Tablespoons sugar
- 1/2 cup Daiya cheddar cheese shreds
- 10 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled
Mix thoroughly and make a well in the center of the dry mix. Then, separately, mix the wet ingredients:
- 1 chia egg (1Tablespoon of ground chia seeds and 3 Tablespoons of water — mix these first)
- 3/4 cup non-dairy milk (I generally use almond)
- 1/3 cup oil (I used canola)
Add the wet ingredients to the dry, and mix until well-combined.

Scoop into lined muffin tins, and bake 25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out of the center of a muffin clean. Goes well with coffee. Store loosely covered for up to 3 days, or freeze to keep longer.

I’m just putting this photo out there because I kind of love it. Photo by J. Andrews
May 19, 2014
Cure Your Own Salt Pork
Two of three ingredients needed to cure salt pork – because uncooked salt pork isn’t that attractive

Since the corn allergy apocalypse, I’ve been making my own baked beans and pressure canning them so they will be relatively free of corn ingredients. Except I’ve been cheating a bit *hangs head in shame* — I’ve been using salt pork from the grocery store which has dextrose and sodium erythorbate, which are corn ingredients. I figured it was only a little bit in each jar (dumb, dumb, please don’t follow my example). But after learning how to cure bacon, I thought, hey, salt pork can’t be that hard right? And then I did some Google-fu and found out that, in fact, making some salt pork would be easier than making the bacon. So I had to do it, because the cleaner I eat, the less full my allergy bucket is, and the better off I am when I have a bigger exposure to something, and the healthier I feel.

Salt Pork
- 1 pound boneless pork belly cut into half inch thick slices, between 1-2 inches long (I removed the skin, but it’s up to you)
- 1/2 cup kosher or non-iodized salt (the stuff they use to iodize the salt is dextrose, a.k.a. corn, get stuff with no other ingredients but salt.)
- 2 Tablespoons cane sugar
Mix the salt and the sugar in a bowl.

Pork belly sliced into half inch thick pieces

Use some of the salt and sugar mixture to rub or dredge the pork belly slices.

Pork belly slices dredged in salt and sugar mixture

In a glass, ceramic, or stainless steel container (I used Pyrex), spread a layer of the salt and sugar mixture. Place a layer of the sugar and salt coated pork belly sliced on top of the layer of the salt and sugar mixture.

Dredged pork belly slices on salt and sugar mixture layer

Sprinkle more of the salt and sugar mixture on top and add another layer of pork belly slices. Continue alternating the pork and salt and sugar mixture until you don’t have any pork belly slices left. Sprinkle the remaining salt and sugar mixture over the top of the pork belly slices.

Completed layers of pork belly slices and salt and sugar mixture

Cover the container with a lid or some plastic wrap and refrigerate it. The pork belly slices will be cured and ready to use in 2-3 days.

Pork belly slices after curing for 2 days in fridge

Rinse the salt and sugar mixture off of the salt pork slices. Pat them dry with a paper towel.

Salt pork rinsed and patted dry on paper towels

They are now ready to use in your beans, chowders (non-dairy of course) or stews, or you can store them in a resealable plastic bag in your freezer.

Salt pork in a resealable plastic bag ready to go into the freezer

Enjoy!
May 12, 2014
Bison Chili
Bison Chili with sliced avocado — keeping you warm until spring really shows up

I know, I know, I know. It’s MAY. Which is more than officially spring. I should be posting fresh asparagus recipes, or greener than green salads, or something fresh and colorful, right? Instead, I have chili. Seriously? In May?

But yes, chili. See spring is a rather evil season in most of the northern part of the US, especially this year. It’s been a fickle and bitchy season — teasing, taunting, and often freezing. So after spending a few days outside last week in this capricious weather, I am offering a mild and tasty chili (no 18 types of peppers in this version), made lighter with lean bison rather than beef, with a good mix of spices to warm you up and yet not remind you of winter. Hopefully.

Oh, and if you want to vegetarianize the basic chili spice recipe here, I think TVP reanimated with mushroom broth might make a good substitute, but I didn’t try it because of the soy allergy. If you give it a go, will you let us know in the comments?

Mmmm, spring chili. Why not?

Bison Chili
- 2 Tablespoons oil
- 2 cups chopped onion (about 1 1/2 medium onions)
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 lb. ground bison
- 2 Italian peppers, cleaned and chopped (these are more sweet than spicy, long and green)
- 1 1/2 teaspoons oregano
- 1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
- 4 teaspoons chili powder
- 1 can of chili beans (I’ve been using a can of mixed types of beans, which I kind of love)
- 1 teaspoon fresh, minced garlic or 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon zatar blend spice**
- 1-24 oz can of fire-roasted tomatoes (or two smaller cans, or your own cooked tomatoes)
- Optional toppings: avocado, diced tomatoes, crushed corn chips, non-dairy cheese
Heat a large stock pot over medium heat. When the pan is hot, add the oil and let it heat until shimmering.

Add the onion and salt, cook until translucent. Then add the peppers, cook for another minute or two, then add the garlic if you’re using fresh garlic. Stir well.

Add the meat and break it up as it cooks. When the meat is broken up well and mostly cooked, add the dried seasoning (add garlic powder here if you’re using that).

Add the beans, stir well, and then add the tomatoes. When the mixture is at a low boil, turn it down to low and simmer it for at least 40 minutes.

Add toppings and serve! This chili really benefits from a little avocado on top — I think the richness and “green” flavor compliments the lean meat (add just a pinch of kosher salt to the avocado to make its flavor really pop). Leftovers are pretty great over baked sweet potato.

**This spice blend contains sesame. You can leave it out.
May 5, 2014
Vegetable Samosas and Cilantro Dipping Sauce
Vegetable Samosas with Cilantro Dipping Sauce

Indian food, I so miss Indian food. It’s so yummy, and there aren’t a lot of Indian places that would be safe for me between the dairy and coconut thing, even if the corn thing weren’t an issue. Once of my very favorite appetizers to get were Vegetable Samosas. I love them. It’s been a long, long time, so it was time to get around to trying to recreate a safe version. Now I really wanted them to have that egg roll/fried dough/pastry crust type consistency, but without gluten it’s really freaking hard to do. My attempts ended up either being like bad pie crust when I tried baking them, or they flaked apart in the oil when I tried deep frying them. So, not wanting to wait for eternity until I managed to cobble together a dough in the Goldilocks zone, I decided to try rice paper. I love Vietnamese fresh spring/summer rolls, so I have a ton of rice paper in the house. I knew you could fry rice paper wrapped spring rolls, although I’d never done it before, so I decided to just wing it. Apparently you don’t deep fry rice paper wrapped spring rolls. You ever want to see a spring roll bubble up like it has tumors, just deep fry one of these. After doing research on how you’re actually supposed to do it, they came out pretty good, other than being shaped like spring rolls instead of cone or triangle shaped like samosas. Let me know what you think.

Vegetable Samosas and Cilantro Dipping Sauce

Makes about 14, more or less.

Do the sauce first so that it’s all ready to go so that you can eat when you’re done frying.

Cilantro Dipping Sauce:
- 2 cups of tightly packed chopped cilantro
- 1 garlic clove
- 1 jalapeno pepper (use half a habanero if you want to kick things up a bit) de-stemmed, seeded, and minced
- 1/2 inch long piece of peeled ginger
- 1 teaspoon garam masala (I used Penzey’s version, but I’m sure there are a ton of recipes on the interwebs)
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- 4 Tablespoons of lemon juice (or the juice of one lemon)
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
Put all the ingredients in a blender or food processor. Blend until smooth. (Ta-dah! That was easy wasn’t it?) Put in a container and pop it in the refrigerator until you’re ready for it. (The picture below is all fancy, you get a lot more sauce than that.)

Cilantro Dipping Sauce

Samosas:
- 3 potatoes, washed, peeled, cubed, and boiled (like you’re making mashed potatoes)
- 1/2 cup green peas (or whatever other vegetable you’d like in it)
- 1 teaspoon of grated fresh ginger
- 1 clove of garlic, minced, or whatever it is when you put it through a garlic press
- 2 Tablespoons of fresh chopped cilantro
- 1 jalapeno pepper (or the other half of that habanero if you used it for the dipping sauce) de-stemmed, seeded, and minced
- 1 teaspoon of garam masala
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 1/2 teaspoon of cumin seeds
- 2 Tablespoons of lemon juice (or the juice of half a lemon)
- Spring Roll Rice Paper Wrappers (Round 22cm) – the link is here so you can see what you’re looking for, but we’re not affiliated with Amazon in anyway. Also, any brand will do.
- safe for you oil to use for frying
Once you’ve got your potatoes washed, peeled, cubed, and boiled, you’re going to want to give them a fairly rough mash. You don’t want them smooth, lumpy is good.

Potatoes, roughly mashed

Let them cool for a bit. In the meantime, get all your other ingredients (except the rice paper and oil) in a bowl large enough for the ingredients and the potatoes. When your potatoes have cooled a bit (you can stick them in the fridge to hurry that along), mix the potatoes with the other ingredients so that they are well combined.

Samosa filling

Now to assemble your samosas. You’ll need a bowl of warm water (I use the water as hot as I can get it out of the tap) big enough for you to dip the rice paper in. You’ll also need a smooth clean surface to place your rice paper after moistening it. I used my dough rolling mat, but you can just use a plate if it’s big enough. Also, you’ll need a tray or sheet pan with some parchment paper or waxed paper on it to store your completed samosas until you’re ready to fry.

Dip your rice paper into the water, making sure that the entire surface is moistened.

Moistening your rice paper

Be careful that you don’t let the rice paper fold against itself, I’ve never been talented enough to get it back apart again, although I’m told it’s possible. Lay the rice paper out flat on your working surface.

Rice paper getting ready for filling

Place some filling on your rice paper. I used about two tablespoons. You can use more or less depending on your preference, you’re just going to make more or less samosas.

Samosa filling on rice paper

Fold the two sides over the samosa filling, making it so that the sides angle in towards the top, making it somewhat triangular.

Sides folded over the samosa filling

Fold the bottom edge up over the samosa filling.

Folding bottom edge up over filling

Roll the filling over the rest of the rice paper, like you’re rolling up a sleeping bag, or a burrito, depending on your arbitrary cultural reference. The end should stick to the roll.

Completed samosa

Repeat the process until you have lots of samosas ready to fry.

Samosas ready to fry

Now we need to prepare a place to stash our samosas once they’ve been fried. Cover another tray or sheet pan, with a couple layers of paper towels, and then place a cookie rack on it upside down so that the cookie rack is laying on the paper towels (more oil gets absorbed this way).

In a frying pan, pour enough oil that when you put a samosa in it, the oil will only go half way up the side of the samosa and does not cover the samosa. Less oil is better than more. Heat your oil over medium low to medium heat. Be very careful to space them out, because if they touch each other the rice paper will rip when you try to separate them, and then you’ll have filling in your oil, which will burn up into little dark bits and cover the outside of your samosas. Look at the pictures and then ask me how I know, haha.

Samosas frying

Also, these are going to take so much longer than you imagine. I don’t know if its the rice paper or if it’s the moisture content in the potatoes, but expect to be frying for some time. Also, don’t go any higher than medium on the heat, otherwise you’ll get really big bubbles on your wrappers potentially causing holes and scorching. As you’re frying turn them occasionally with a pair of tongs to make sure they cook evenly. When the rice paper wrappers look like this, they’re done:

Fried Samosas

Yours will not have the little burned bits on the outside because you will be more careful about keeping them separated than I was, but if you do have little burned bits, they don’t affect the taste of your samosas. Although the rice paper wrapper is a different texture than a dough or pastry wrapper, they had a good bit of crunch and were yummy. Enjoy!
April 28, 2014