Fresh Falafel From Scratch!

Seth's Recipe                                                  

1 bag dried chick peas (garbanzo beans/chana, whatever you call them)
3-4 cloves of garlic diced
1 onion (medium sized) diced
1 cup chopped parsley
1 tbspn fresh mint chopped
1 tbspn fresh greek oregano chopped
2-3 tablespoons of flour (or cornstarch, but only 1 tablespoon)
1/4 tspn baking soda
1/4 tspn baking powder
1/2 tspn cumin
1/4 tspn turmeric
1 tspn paprika
1 tbspn olive oil

Soak chic peas overnight, and drain them. Use a blender to ground the chickpeas with the herbs, spices and the 3-4 cloves of garlic, 1 whole onion (medium sized). You can blend the onion and garlic down to a pulp prior to mixing it with the chic peas or you can blend all of the ingredients together, whatever works for the food processor or blender you have.

Some people even grind the peas to a flour and create falafel that way, but my husband does his this way.
Add the baking powder, baking soda, flour or cornstarch to the mix. You only want enough to make it bind/stick, but you don't want to get a mouth full of breading, so mind the amount of flour you use. It's best to ensure that you don't lose the chic pea taste. Drizzle the olive oil over the mixture, and stir the mixture well. Cover it and allow it to set in the fridge.



(allow the mixture to settle in the fridge for as long as you want, but at least 30 min to an hour for the flour and baking soda to properly absorb all the liquid in the mixture and come together as a homogenous mass).

Frying the falafel



Rub your hands with olive oil, or whatever oil you have so that you can shape the balls in perfect spheres. Some people use a special tool or a melon ball scoop or something. So, you can get creative. However, this is how  my husband does it.

Put them all on a plate like you see in the pictures below. The oil should be getting warm in the pan while you're doing this, but be careful not to burn it, and don't put too much oil because you don't want the oil to flow over the sides of the pan when you add the falafel to the oil. Or you can use a deep fryer...we even have one, but we never use it.

Fry the falafel until they are golden brown on the outside, and you don't want to put the oil on high heat, but you want to put it on medium, so the falafel doesn't cook too fast on the outside and not enough on the inside.

 

The fine recipe is in the picture above. However, I prefer the course recipe depicted in the picture below. Also, there is jajuk, which is a yogurt sauce/cold soup recipe that I like better than tzaziki.