Author Notes: Falafels are one of our favorite foods to eat. They’re packed with amazing flavors and us vegetarians get a good amount of protein from them. My mom makes the falafel balls from scratch at home but I just bought the frozen kind from Trader Joe’s or Costco. The thing that kept me from making them at home was the idea of frying them. I don’t like frying things. I’ve had my own home for almost 4 years now and I have never fried anything in my kitchen. I always seek the alternative. Don’t get me wrong, I occasionally indulge in fried food at restaurants (mainly, French Fries and Vegetable Samosas) but I don’t like the act of frying, the smell that lingers or, the more obvious reason, the nutrition facts of fried food — yikes! However, when I saw two fellow bloggers make baked falafels, I was inspired and immediately jumped on the bandwagon and attempted my own version. Here’s a mash up of Recipris and Sprouted Kitchen’s recipes. —themessimake.com
Serves: 3
Ingredients
Baked Falafels
-
2
cups canned garbanzo beans
-
1/2
onion
-
1/4
cup toasted walnuts
-
1
cup parsley
-
3
cloves of garlic
-
1
teaspoon crushed red pepper
-
1
teaspoon ground cumin
-
1
teaspoon salt (add more or less per your taste)
-
1
teaspoon baking soda
-
1
teaspoon lemon juice
-
1
tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
-
5
pita pockets – cut in half
-
1
large or 2 small tomatoes – sliced
-
1
cucumber – sliced
Tahini-Yogurt Sauce
-
1
cup plain non-fat greek yogurt
-
2
tablespoons tahini (sesame paste)
-
1
tablespoon tbsp Zahtar or 1 tbsp ground cumin
-
1/4
teaspoon salt
-
A few turns of black pepper or 1 tsp crushed red pepper
Directions
Baked Falafels
- Pre-heat the oven to 375 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil.
- In a food processor, pulse the ingredients in three steps in the following order: first -> toasted walnuts, second -> parsley + onion + garlic, third -> garbanzo beans + crushed red pepper + salt + baking soda + lemon juice + extra virgin olive oil. Pulse until everything is well incorporated but make sure you don’t over do it or the mixture will become too mushy and difficult to work with. [Side note: I made the mistake of putting everything in the food processor at once – mainly for photographing purposes. It was a huge mistake. The ingredients didn’t blend too well. I had to pick out the walnuts, chunky onion and garlic pieces and blend them separately. It just ended up taking more time than anticipated.]
- Make 2 inch balls using your hands or use a small ice cream scoop and scoop the mixture onto a parchment or aluminum foil lined baking sheet.
- Bake for 20 minutes, flipping them over halfway through.
Tahini-Yogurt Sauce
- Put all ingredients in a blender and run the blender until everything is well incorporated. You can choose to whisk all the ingredients by hand if you want.
- Cover and refrigerate in a glass jar until you’re ready to use it.
- Place sliced tomatoes, cucumbers and two falafel balls in a pita pocket. Drizzle with Tahini-Yogurt sauce [recipe below].
1 of 6
2 of 6
3 of 6
4 of 6
5 of 6
6 of 6