Homemade Vegan Balls – Easy Falafel Alternative!

These are super amazing homemade vegan balls which you can eat in a wrap, just like you would eat falafel. Or you can serve them with salad, in a pita pocket, as the star of a meal or as a tapas with a dip.

There are three things I love about these homemade vegan balls!

• They’re made from leftovers!
• They’re sooo easy to make.
• They’re scrumptious!

Vegan Balls – Made From Leftovers

The beauty of this recipe is that you make it from leftovers. So whenever you cook something, just cook a bit too much and the next day, make some delicious vegan balls.

Here are some example meals which can be used, but really there’ no limit to what leftovers go well for this.

• Pasta mixed with a pasta sauce: mash the pasta and sauce together, add some spice and go ahead with the recipe.

• If you’ve made a curry, that goes perfectly too. Just mash the curry and add a bit of the rice to it before following the recipe.

• Leftover lentils? Great! Blend the lentils with a hand blender, just enough to break them up and not to get a smooth paste. You still want some texture left.

• Moussaka? Perfect.

• Lentil pasta salad? Superb!

• Lasagne? A dream!

• Almost any leftovers will go. If it’s a non-spicy food, add cumin, coriander and chilli.

How to Make Vegan Balls

So, you’ve got your leftovers and you’ve either mashed them or given them a quick zap with the hand blender. Next, add some cumin and chilli. You can add any flavourings you like at this stage: fresh coriander goes well if you have some.

Add some gram flour to the mix and stir it in. Keep adding it and stirring until your mixture thickens up sufficiently that you can make balls from it.

Now pour a little gram flour into a large bowl. Take a teaspoon of mix, roll it quickly between your palms, dunk it into the gram flour and place onto a chopping board. The whole process can be done quite quickly once you get the hang of it.

Heat about 1 cm of olive oil in the bottom of a wide pan and add the vegan balls to fry on a medium high heat. After about 10 minutes, turn the balls over to fry on the other side for another (approx) 10 minutes. Remove from the hot oil using a spoon with holes in it and place onto a plate with kitchen paper on it to absorb any surplus oil.

You can also bake these instead of frying. Simply make the mixture a bit juicier, brush the ball with a little olive oil, place into a baking tray and into the oven for about 20 minutes, turning half way through.

I like the vegan balls best when they’re fried because they can dry out when you bake them. If you’re aware of that and don’t add too much gram flour though, they can also come out of the oven absolutely yummy.

Another option is to bake them and then store them in the fridge and when you’re ready to eat, just toss them in a frying pan for a few minutes to heat them up in a little olive oil.

What to Serve With Vegan Balls

• Eat these in a wrap with some tahini sauce, chopped lettuce, cherry tomatoes and spicy jalapeños.

• Make a delicious Buddha Bowl with vegan balls included in the bowl.

• Choose a vegan sauce to go with the balls. Tahini sauce is a great one.

• Serve alongside a grilled summer vegetable salad.

• Serve with a gluten free pasta salad.

• Choose this easy quinoa salad recipe and enjoy the vegan balls on the side.

• Definitely serve with a delicious bowl of homemade hummus!

• Make a king salad to accompany these vegan balls, and enjoy!

This recipe is brought to you to give inspiration for what to cook and ideas about how to go about making something but it is supposed to be altered to suit what you have handy, and the cooking times given are rough guides.

It will always depend on the quantities, produce, utensils and oven you’re using, so cook by keeping an eye on the food, not by times set down in the recipe.

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