How to Make Falafel

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!

don't forget to dry the chickpeas after soaking. Forgot to do that, so added some paper towels to the bottom of the bag while letting the mix sit. Also added a couple spoons of flour to help them stick together.

These are a perfect match to what you would get at an authentic Middle Eastern restaurant

Even better with half chickpeas and half fava beans!

Used a meat grinder to grind everything together (one pass through the finest setting) the texture was great. Ended up baking them then finishing in on a pan with some oil. The side that was down in the oil first while baking came out great (be mindful of a potential tilt in the oven, some got stuck due to the lack of oil) I tried a couple of them fried. I actually preferred the "baked ones. The herbs came through better. For next time: add more oil to the baking pan and reapply when flipping and make sure they're shaped like disks so they can have a flat surface to brown. I think these would be great in an air fryer with a heavy spray of oil

It turned out great. It made a lot. It kind of overwhelmed my food processor. It took a long time, blending and stirring and pushing down and blending again. I froze half of it before cooking. The frozen balls were really wet when I thawed them out. I had to squeeze the moisture out with paper towels. Otherwise, they wouldn't hold together. Once I did that, I fried them as usual, and they were just as crispy and delicious as the ones that weren't frozen. I saud "Special Occasion" because it is time-consuming and a bit messy. But delicious!

Follow the recipe! You won't regret it!

We took a trip out of town and Trader Joe’s was out of falafel mix, so I pushed up my sleeves to make my own! I’ve seen countless fails and was convinced making falafel was difficult—this recipe proved me wrong. Next go-around I will double the spices, add onion and garlic powder. I used dry dill, and upped the fresh cilantro to 1 cup. These puppies crisp up beautifully. The sound when you break them open is such music. I made ten and still have more than half a batch to make tomorrow. We are in HEAVEN! We ate these in lettuce wraps with pickled turnip, lightly sweetened homemade bread and butter pickles, a green goddess sauce, homemade hummus and topped it with lime. The textures and flavors are truly next level.

Super fresh tasting and easy to make. Would probably add a little more seasoning next time for slightly more flavour.

How are you supposed to make falafel when you can't use canned or cooked chickpeas?