← Replies in How to Make Falafel Recipe

This was AWESOME and we loved it. As usual, we made enough for a whole horde of hungry barbarians, aka my whole family. As usual, my wife is the baker in the family, and she made us stacks of pita bread so that we could serve the food in pockets. This makes it more like finger food which we all really love here. We started on Sunday night by soaking 15 lb of dried chickpeas in water overnight with baking soda in some very large stock pots. We then drain the chickpeas and spread them out on towels so that we could dry them which makes grinding them up even easier. Once we had all the chickpeas ground and we had chopped the cilantro, parsley, and some mint and Dill we used our big and I mean really big stand mixer to mix everything together. We put them into the walk-in coolers in the commercial kitchen and came back today pulled them out and mixed baking powder to make them light and fluffy. Once that was done we set the teenage granddaughters to making the balls of falafel using cookie scoops. And we ended up with a lot of balls of falafel! At that point they come over to me at the deep fryer which I had set to 375°. I dropped one ball in first to give it a test fry and it was done in 3 minutes. At that point, I lowered the Fry basket about halfway down and quickly started dropping the balls into the fryer. Using the basket I was circulating the oil around the falafel and shaking it and making sure that everything got browned. At 3 minutes I pulled up the basket dumped them out into a bowl that was lined with paper towels, and made the next batch while keeping the first batch warm. Then we started assembling them into the pockets of the pita bread along with diced tomatoes, sliced onions and tzatziki sauce. Where we live the only way I can get tahini paste is to either drive 75 mi to Houston or mail order it, and I couldn't get it in time to be able to serve them. So everyone loved the tzatziki sauce, and with it being stuffed in pockets it made for some very fun and somewhat messy finger food. We will definitely make these again. But next time I may have to increase the size of the batch because we didn't have anything left!

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Karri Barlow· 4 days ago

Awesome! How many people do you feed?

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Retired 7th Generation Texan and Lawman· 4 days ago

On a regular night, it's 18 with some of them still growing kids. But we also have 4 tiny houses on the homestead that we rent out on weekends and during the weeks starting after Memorial Day so it can go as many as 30 since we include dinners in the rental rate.

Karri Barlow· 4 days ago

So awesome! We average 20. All family. So great to see someone else who understands big meals!

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Karri Barlow· 4 days ago

And sourdough starter! So do we! But our journey down that road started over 14 years ago when I refused to accept the Dr.'s diagnosis of celiac for the whole family. We do home-ground whole wheat sourdough bread and all the rest of it, from sourdough pie crust to sourdough cookies and cakes, tortillas. Anything made with flour. And nobody is celiac, anymore.

Retired 7th Generation Texan and Lawman· 3 days ago

My wife is our baker, not only for the family, but when she offers baked goods in the store. It's really her store but I help out as much as I can. She mostly sells small batch salsas and hot sauces, but she also makes traditional Mexican candies and desserts and such. We actually have a commercial kitchen on the property. I'm a retired law enforcement officer after 30 years, all three of our kids, all their spouses and my two oldest grandkids are also law enforcement. I'll have to ask her to make some sourdough tortillas. Never had them before. Except for me, I'm full blooded Irish, but everyone else here is Mexican American, all 3rd and 4th and 5th generation. We eat a LOT of Mexican food. She grew up in a Mexican restaurant and I've learned all the recipes they used to sell. And every Sunday is our BBQ day. I'm the one who handles that. Brisket, chicken, sausage, corn, barbacoa on occasion. The smokers get fired up on Saturday night and almost everything gets slow cooked overnight. The men in the family and I tend those smokers overnight, bonding, drinking some beers, laughing and having fun. And I always make enough to not only feed our Sheriff's deputies at the substation, but also to have a Sunday night feed at our church. I said I live semi rural, so we only have Sheriff's deputies, and the church is on the same country road we are. So yeah, we DO know how to feed a crowd, although I always refer to my crowd as a horde of hungry barbarians. And my wife and I may be 71, but it keeps us young and fit.

Karri Barlow· 3 days ago

I love it! ❤️ You're about the age of my father. Your generation really are true Americans. I love how your generation, some of them, brought up your children to follow your path. Here's hoping you'll all stay around with your stable influence to guide the rest of us for a long, long time to come. Thank you. 😊 I am traveling right now, but when I get home, I'll let you know the recipe for sourdough tortillas that has been the most successful for us. I'm sure your wife will have some pointers that will make them even better.

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Retired 7th Generation Texan and Lawman· 3 days ago

We would love the recipe! I just asked her and she said she never had them but she'd be willing to use some of her starter for it. I swear that the starter should have taken over the kitchen by now. She stores it in gallon jars and ALWAYS replenishes it. If she lived in San Francisco, she could open a bakery with that stuff. She's had it ever since we got married..... In 1975! But she's really grown it. I've heard that some of the bakeries in San Francisco have starters that date back to the late 1800s. So ours is still a child compared to those. She first got it when she flew out to visit me at Camp Pendleton and then went up to Frisco before coming back home. That was just before we got married.