Susan’s Samosas Are a Ready-to-Reheat Taste of East Africa

Susan Loriho’s samosas are more than fried pastries: They’re a migration story. At a refugee camp in Kenya after fleeing civil war in her native Sudan, six-year-old Loriho first tasted the savory treat, produced by members of the country’s large Indian community. She carried memories of those triangle-shaped pouches with her to the foot of the Flatirons, where she settled in 2006, but she didn’t share them with the world until she was laid off from her job as a preschool teacher at the onset of the pandemic. With time and a bank account to fill, Loriho launched Susan’s Samosas in 2020, selling ready-to-reheat parcels of crispy dough. Her recipes add tender ground beef or chicken and onion to a traditional Indian filling of potatoes, peas, and carrots; then she zings everything with cilantro, paprika, cumin, turmeric, and curry powder. Loriho adds the same seasonings to her lentil soup, which she learned to cook in the camp, where legumes were often one of the only foods available. Today, you can find her bags of frozen samosas and pints of spicy, soul-warming soup at specialty stores such as Platt Park’s Ruby’s Market and Boulder’s Nude Foods, and the products are also available at this season’s Nederland and Boulder farmers’ markets. “It doesn’t matter where you live, as long as you’re safe and comfortable,” she says. “I just feel like this is my home.”