The Guinness world record for the largest samosa has been smashed as a 153-kg gigantic version of the popular Indian tea-time snack was prepared at a mosque in London.
The snack was made by a 12-member team of Muslim Aid volunteers at the East London Mosque yesterday. After Guinness World Records officials approved their feat, the team distributed the gigantic samosa, which took over 15 hours to make, to homeless people around Whitechapel.
The previous record for the world’s largest samosa was of 110.8 kg set by Bradford College in northern England in June 2012.
A Guinness World Records spokesperson was quoted by the Evening Standard as saying that, “This is an impressive achievement by Muslim Aid and a lot of hard work and determination has gone into this attempt to ensure its success.”
“We are pleased to welcome them to the Guinness World Records family,” the spokesperson said.
Members of the mosque said they decided to make the samosa to highlight the “generosity of Muslim people during religious festivals like Eid”.
“We wanted to make a larger-than-ever version of this popular food to demonstrate visually how people of the Muslim faith work tirelessly throughout the year, and particularly during Eid, doing charitable acts to support the unfortunate in the community around them and further afield,” Muslim Aid’s Zac Hussain was quoted as saying.
“The samosa will feed the homeless near our offices in London. Meanwhile, donations via Muslim Aid will feed hundreds of thousands in the developing world,” he said.
The samosa needed to be triangular, contain flour, potato, onion, and peas and be deep-fried while maintaining its shape for it to be considered a successful attempt at the record. And, most importantly, it had to be fit for human consumption.
The huge samosa was set up on an oversized wire rack and then lowered into a custom built deep-fryer.