Getting some food prepared and into the freezer before Ramadan is something I try to do every year. It can be a bit of a mission while you’re actually doing it, but once it’s finished, Alhamdulillah, it’s such a relief!
For my Ramadan 2022 food prep, I concentrated mainly on snacks and sides that we could quickly take from the freezer for iftar. I made plenty of our usual favourites, including homemade samosas and spring rolls, but also tried a few different things this year.
Here’s everything I prepared.
1. Homemade Keema & Potato Samosas
I always start with the samosas because they’re probably the most time-consuming part of my Ramadan prep.
I make mine completely from scratch, including the samosa pastry. You can definitely make life easier by using ready-made pastry, but this is how my mum made them and how we grew up making them, so I still love making them this way.
For the filling, I used:
- Minced meat (keema)
- Potatoes
- Onions
- Garlic & ginger paste
- Tomato purée
- Salt
- Various spices
- Whole spices
- Tamarind sauce
I peeled and chopped the potatoes before covering them with cold salted water. Once the water came to the boil, I cooked them for around four minutes until soft and then drained them.
For the keema mixture, I browned the mince in a large pan before adding plenty of chopped onions. Once the onions had softened, I added the garlic and ginger paste, spices, salt, tomato purée and cooked potatoes. I also added some tamarind sauce for extra flavour.
Homemade Samosa Pastry
For my samosa dough I simply use:
- Plain flour
- Sunflower oil
- Water
After mixing everything into a dough, I leave it to rest for around 30 minutes.
I then roll the dough out into thin chapati-style rounds and very lightly cook each side on a tava or frying pan. Each one is sliced in half to create the samosa cases.
To stick the edges together, I make a simple paste using plain flour and water.
One tip is to work with the cases while they’re still slightly warm. I find they’re much easier to shape and mould without breaking.
I made roughly 40–50 samosas from this batch, ready for the freezer.
2. Tandoori Chicken Wings
Next I prepared a big batch of marinated chicken wings.
These are really versatile because we can serve them as a starter alongside other iftar foods or turn them into part of a main meal with rice and salad.
I mixed together my marinade with spices and lemon juice, coated all the chicken wings and then divided them between two freezer bags.
Dividing larger batches into smaller freezer bags is something I find really useful. You don’t necessarily want to defrost an enormous batch every time, so portioning things before freezing makes life much easier.
3. Homemade Chicken Kebabs
I usually make lamb or beef kebabs for Ramadan, but this year I decided to make chicken kebabs instead.
For these I used:
- Chicken mince
- Red onions
- Egg
- Gram flour
- Salt
- Spices
I finely chopped two red onions before combining everything together.
Chicken kebab mixture can be a little softer and harder to shape than lamb or beef, so I left the mixture in the fridge for several hours to firm up.
Once chilled, I shaped the mixture into balls and flattened them slightly to make the kebabs before dividing them between freezer bags.
If you don’t have gram flour, plain flour can also be used.
4. Chicken, Potato & Sweetcorn Spring Rolls
These were filled with a lovely combination of:
- Chicken breast
- Potatoes
- Sweetcorn
- Spring onions
- Lemon juice
- Salt
- Spices
I cut the chicken breast into small pieces and cooked it before shredding it in my chopper.
The potatoes were boiled until soft using the same method as the samosa potatoes.
I then combined the shredded chicken and potatoes with the sweetcorn, spring onions, lemon juice and seasonings. I gave the whole mixture a bit of a mash too, which helped everything come together nicely.
For these I used ready-made spring roll pastry sheets rather than making my own.
You can cut the sheets down to make little spring rolls, but I prefer making larger ones using the whole sheet — partly because it’s quicker!
I managed to make around 40 spring rolls from the mixture.
I also had a little samosa filling left, so rather than wasting it, I used some of the remaining spring roll sheets to make extra samosa-filled rolls for the freezer.
5. Easy Mini Sausage Rolls
After all that samosa making, it’s nice to have something incredibly easy!
For the mini sausage rolls I simply used:
- Mini sausages
- Ready-rolled puff pastry
I wrapped the sausages in pieces of puff pastry and pressed the edges together with a fork.
That’s pretty much it!
The kids really enjoyed these when I made them previously, so they were an easy one to add to this year’s Ramadan freezer stash.
6. Keema, Cheese & Olive Pasties
Finally, I made something a little different: keema, cheese and olive pasties.
These sounded right up my street!
I cooked some beef mince with spices and then made sure the mixture had cooled before adding the cheese. That’s important because otherwise your cheese will start melting before you’ve even assembled the pastries.
I also added chopped black olives.
I used ready-made puff pastry, added the filling and folded each piece over before sealing the edges with a fork.
Don’t forget to make a little hole in the top to allow steam to escape when they’re eventually baked.
I made around 16 pasties altogether.
My Ramadan Freezer Prep Was Done!
And that was it — our Ramadan snack prep was finally finished!
I ended up with a freezer stocked with homemade samosas, spring rolls, chicken kebabs, marinated chicken wings, sausage rolls and keema and cheese pasties.
It’s definitely quite a lot of work when you’re making everything in bulk, especially when you’re making the samosa pastry from scratch. But I’d much rather have one or two big food-prep sessions before Ramadan than have to make all these things from scratch at iftar time.
And you certainly don’t need to make this much.
Even preparing one or two of your family’s favourite Ramadan foods and putting a few batches into the freezer can save you time later.
The difficult part is making sure nobody eats everything before Ramadan starts!
I hope this gives you a few ideas for your own Ramadan meal prep and freezer cooking. May Allah allow us all to reach Ramadan and make the most of it, Ameen.
