Concord Lifting and SP Combine to Lift, Weigh Record Samosa
Lifting equipment, including a custom below-the-hook rig and load cell, was integral to a successful Guinness World Record attempt by humanitarian charity Muslim Aid, which claimed the title for the largest samosa, weighing in at 153.1kg.
The attempt took place in the summer (August) at a mosque in East London, UK and official adjudicator Pravin Patel was on hand to judge the culinary feat. While the attempt presented a number of obvious challenges, Muslim Aid also had to find a solution for lifting the giant samosa for cooking and provide an accurate means of measurement.
It looked to Concord Lifting Equipment, which supplied a Genie Superlift Advantage, boasting load capacities to 454kg and lifting height to 7.49m. The manually operated material lift is compact and portable, allowing it to be rolled through the mosque doors in an upright position. The system is durable, yet requires no tooling for setup.
The Superlift combined with a custom fabricated, aluminium lifting frame that housed the samosa for lowering it into hot oil for cooking. The cooking team also had to source a custom deep fat fryer for the attempt as the massive pastry would have been too heavy to fit in a regular, commercially available one. A total of 12 volunteers from Muslim Aid took 15 hours from start to finish to create the super-sized dish.
They broke a record previously set by Bradford College, which cooked up a samosa weighing 110.8kg back in 2012. To record the winning measurement, Concord sourced a Miniweigher plus crane scale from Straightpoint (SP), suited to the application due to its high accuracy, compact size and extreme portability.
David Mullard, business development manager at SP, said: “Concord approached us about a product that would weigh the samosa on their machine, asking specifically for something about 250kg in capacity to a high level of accuracy—.1 of a kilogram. A Loadlink or Radiolink are more typically suited to higher capacities or bigger machines, so the smaller, more precise option was chosen.”
The Miniweigher plus features full function push button controls for tare, choice of units (lbs, kg, kN and tonnes), peak hold, preset tare, audible set-point alarm and an overload counter. Advanced microprocessor-based electronics provide it with high-speed read rates, extreme resistance to industrial level noise and unprecedented stability.
“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,” said Muslim Aid’s Zac Hussain.
The samosa consisted of 100kg of potatoes, 25kg of onion, 15kg of peas, plus 44kg of flour and traditional Indian spices.
