For a long time, I failed at falafel. They always fell apart! But there are times when persistence pays off as it did in this case. The secret seems to be adding a little chickpea (besan) flour to the mix and refrigerating it for a couple of hours before cooking.
Traditionally, falafel recipes contain bicarb soda. This is to make them fluffier. I personally don’t like the taste of bicarb and I found that even when I left it out, these were light. Usually falafel contain only parsley in the herb department however I use whatever is growing in the garden including, basil, mother of herb, oregano and fennel.
See pictures below to make sure you have your texture spot on. A little pasty but not too much and a little crumbly.
Falafel
Ingredients
- 450g dried chickpeas
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar - for soaking water
- 1 onion - cut in 4-6 pieces
- large handful of parsley, roughly chopped - or other fresh herbs you have available. eg fennel, basil, oregano, mother of herb
- 2 cloves garlic - roughly chopped
- 1 tbsp chickpea (besan) flour
- 1 tsp Celtic sea salt
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- 1/2 tsp ground pepper
- 1 tsp ground turmeric - optional
- Coconut or Extra Virgin Olive oil for fryng
Instructions
- Soak chickpeas in filtered water with apple cider vinegar for 10 or more hours.
- Drain chickpeas and place into a blender with remaining ingredients (except the oil of course).
- Pulse the mixture until it starts to come together. This should be a bit crumbly and a bit pasty. See above photo for reference.
- Refrigerate the mix for at least a couple of hours.
- Using a falafel tool or ice-cream scoop (rubbed with some oil), compress the mix into shape and place on a plate ready for cooking.
- In a frying pan, heat about 1/2cm of oil. You can deep fry if you choose but using a better oil makes this expensive and is unnecessary.
- Fry the falafel until brown on both sides.
- Place on kitchen paper to drain, then serve.
