Vegan Burmese Samosa Soup, known as Samusa Thouk is a Burmese lentil curry soup served with crunchy vegetables and samosa. Popular street food that’s great as a lunch or starter.
Ingredients of Note
In this recipe for Samosa Soup, we use chana dal which are split chickpeas. However, if you can not source chana dal you can use an alternative such as yellow split peas or red lentils, the soup will work just as well. You could speed up the recipe by using a tin of chickpeas instead of the dried version. The flavours won’t get as intense with a shorter cooking time but you will save a bunch of time.
Tamarind paste can sometimes be hard to source depending on where you live. If you can’t find any it’s safe enough to omit. It adds a sour citrus flavour to the soup so if you do omit it make sure to squeeze over lime juice before eating the samosa soup to make up for the missing acidity.
Serving Samosa Soup
Samosa soup is traditionally a popular street food that can be enjoyed any time of the day. Serve it as a light lunch with a couple of samosas or as a main dish with extra samosas to soak up the soup.
You can serve this soup with shop-bought samosas. However, we believe it’s worth the extra effort to make your own Burmese Vegan Samosas.
Burmese Samosa Soup (Samusa Thouk)
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons gram flour
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- ½ teaspoon cumin seeds
- ½ teaspoon mustard seeds
- 2 dried red chillies
- 1 banana shallot finely diced
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- ½ teaspoon turmeric
- ½ teaspoon garam masala
- 1 teaspoon Kashmiri chilli powder
- 1 teaspoon ground coriander
- ½ teaspoon cracked black pepper
- ½ cup chana dal
- 1 liter vegetable stock
- 1 tablespoon tamarind paste
- 12 Samosa
Garnish
- Red onion finely sliced
- Cabbage finely sliced
- Carrots finely sliced
- Coriander chopped
- Lime
Instructions
- Thoroughly pick over and rinse the chana dal, then set aside for later.
- Heat a dry pan over medium heat. Add the gram flour and toast until golden. Watch not to burn. Transfer the gram flour to a bowl and whisk with ½ cup of water. Set aside.
- Heat 2 tablespoons vegetable oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Once hot add the cumin seeds, mustard seeds and dried chillies. Cook until the seeds begin to pop, around 30 seconds.
- Add the shallot and cook until they are beginning to turn golden, around 5 minutes.
- Add the garlic and continue to cook for 1 minute.
- Next, add the spices and cook for a further 1 minute. Turmeric, garam masala, Kashmir chilli powder, ground coriander and cracked black pepper.
- Now add the chana dal, 1 litre vegetable stock, 1 tablespoon tamarind paste and the reserved toasted gram flour mixture.
- Bring to a boil for 10 minutes then turn down the heat to a gentle simmer. Simmer for a further 30 minutes. Check that the chana dal is fully cooked, if they require more time then continue to cook until ready.
- Taste for seasoning and add salt. The amount needed will depend on how salty the vegetable stock is.
- Serve the soup with samosas and finely sliced vegetables. Squeeze over a wedge of lime before eating.
