Name: Kazakh Samsa
Prep time: 1 h
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 1 h 25 min
Yield: 10 servings
Cuisine: Kazakh
Ingredients: For the dough: 3 cups all-purpose flour; 1 cup cold water; 1 tsp salt; 5 tbsp melted butter for laminating; For the filling: 300g beef, finely chopped (not ground); 200g lamb shoulder with fat, finely chopped; 2 large onions, finely diced; 100g fat-tail lamb fat or regular lamb fat, diced small; 1 tsp ground black pepper; 1 tsp ground cumin; 1.5 tsp salt; For topping: 1 egg yolk, sesame seeds

Triangular meat pastries baked on the outer walls of a clay tandoor — the Kazakh version filled with beef and fat-tail lamb, crispier and chunkier than any oven-baked imitation.

The Cultural Story

Samsa exists across Central Asia but each culture makes it its own. The Kazakh samsa is known for its hearty, unapologetically fatty filling — beef and lamb, finely chopped by hand rather than ground, mixed with raw onion and a generous portion of fat-tail lamb (kurdiuk) which renders inside the pastry during baking and creates a pool of rich broth in every bite. The pastry is made with a simple unleavened dough stretched thin and layered with fat for flakiness. In Kazakhstan, samsa sellers post themselves outside major mosques on Fridays and at crossroads bazaars, their clay tandoors glowing from before dawn. The samsa baked against the walls of a proper tandoor develops a particular blistered char on the side that touched the clay that is impossible to replicate in a home oven, but a very hot home oven with a preheated pizza stone gets respectably close. Kazakh samsa tends to be larger than its Uzbek cousin, and the dough is rolled thicker, giving it a more substantial chew.

Ingredients

For the dough: 3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup cold water
1 tsp salt
5 tbsp melted butter for laminating
For the filling: 300g beef, finely chopped (not ground)
200g lamb shoulder with fat, finely chopped
2 large onions, finely diced
100g fat-tail lamb fat or regular lamb fat, diced small
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp ground cumin
1.5 tsp salt
For topping: 1 egg yolk, sesame seeds

Instructions

1Make dough: combine flour and salt, add cold water and knead into a firm, smooth dough. Rest covered 20 minutes.
2Roll dough into a large thin rectangle. Brush generously with melted butter. Fold into thirds, then roll thin again. Brush again with butter. Rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.
3Make filling: combine chopped beef, lamb, lamb fat, diced onion, and all spices. Mix thoroughly. The mixture should be moist from the onion.
4Roll chilled dough and cut into 12cm squares or circles.
5Place a generous tablespoon of filling in the center. Fold into a triangle, pressing edges firmly. For the Kazakh fold, bring two corners up and over to form a three-sided parcel with sealed seams.
6Place on a baking sheet seam-side down. Brush with egg yolk and scatter sesame seeds on top.
7Bake at 240C (465F) for 20-25 minutes until deeply golden and the filling is cooked through. The pastry should be flaky and slightly blistered.
8Eat hot — the fat-tail lamb fat inside will have rendered into an irresistibly rich broth.

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