I’m a huge fan of falafel, but I had never considered trying to make it until Mike suggested the idea. We normally have a can of chickpeas on hand because we like to make our own hummus, so I looked up a basic falafel recipe and came up with this one on All Recipes, called Sean’s Falafel. Of course, I didn’t have all the ingredients it called for on hand, so I listed what I actually used.
Ingredients
- 1 (15 ounce) can chickpeas, drained
- dash of onion powder
- 1 tsp dried parsley
- 3 heaping tsp minced garlic
- 1 egg
- 2 teaspoons ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon ground coriander
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 dash pepper
- 1 pinch cayenne pepper
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 cup dry bread crumbs (this was roughly 2 slices of bread)
- oil for frying
Directions
- In a large bowl mash chickpeas until thick and pasty; don’t use a blender, as the consistency will be too thin.
- In a small bowl combine egg, cumin, coriander, salt, pepper, cayenne, lemon juice, baking powder, and garlic. Stir into chickpea mixture along with olive oil. Slowly add bread crumbs until mixture is not sticky but will hold together; add more or less bread crumbs, as needed. Form 8 balls and then flatten into patties. I actually made my balls smaller and got 14 in total.
- Though falafels are usually deep fried, I’ve had bad luck in the past trying to put that much oil in a frying pan, so I pan fried them in some olive oil until they were brown on both sides.
To go with the falafels, Mike chopped up some tomato, cucumber, orange pepper and olives and mixed in some feta. We put this mixture on a toasted greek style pita (the kind with no pocket). It was super tasty and didn’t even take long to prepare.
