In case you're unfamiliar with what a falafel is, it's a traditional Middle Eastern deep-fried ball of yummy-ness. It's usually made from chickpeas and served with pita bread or with a salad.
Deep-fried foods aren't part of a healthy lifestyle so the version I'm about to give you can either be made by shallow pan frying or baked in the oven.The falafel is supposed to be crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. You can get this texture best by pan frying, but it's not impossible to bake them.
Ingredients to make 4 wraps:
1 can of chickpeas
Small handful of fresh parsley
Small handful of fresh cilantro
2 fresh garlic cloves
1/2 chopped red onion
1/2 Tbsp cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
pinch of salt
pinch of pepper
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4-1/2 chickpea flour (or all purpose flour)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Lettuce
Chopped roma tomato
Chopped cucumber
Vegan mayo or tzatziki sauce
Pita or tortilla wrap
Procedure:
The first thing to do is to prepare the chickpeas. If you've followed any of my recipes before, you know I don't like the skins and I always remove those first. It's not a completely necessary step, you can skip it if you want, I just believe the texture is better without the skins and it only takes about two minutes to pinch those things off.
In a food processor, or in a high speed blender, mix in chickpeas, cilantro, parsley, garlic, onion, cumin, cayenne pepper, salt, pepper, baking powder and about half of the flour. The flour helps with binding. Chickpea flour will give you the best flavor but any kind of all-purpose flour will be just fine.
As you mix/pulse, you'll see the mixture start to pull away from the sides. Keep pulsing until you can start to see clumps. If the mixture looks dry and isn't starting to clump, you can add 1/2-1 tsp of water. Mine was missing moisture because I left out the onions; so I added 1 tsp of water to my mixture.
The mixture is ready when you're able to squish it together and it holds together.
Now I like to put mine in the fridge for at least an hour while the flavors mingle together. I also think it hold together better when it's cold. Once you're ready to form your patties, you can use a small cookie scoop to get clean equal sizes. Scoop out the mixture and then just mash it down into a patty. If I'm going to throw these into a salad, I'll roll them into balls, but for wraps, I think the patties work best.
Now you have two options, three if you count deep frying them. One option is to bake them. If you want to do this, place them on a lightly oiled pan, brush each one with oil and bake them in a pre-heated 325 degree oven for 25-30 minutes, flipping halfway through. The next option, and the one that I prefer, is to shallow pan fry them. This way gets them super crispy, and you don't have to saturate them with oil; in fact, you really use very little oil. I actually used too much oil in the pictures because I thought I was going to cook more of them in a bigger pan. You really only need to coat the bottom of the pan.
Heat your skillet on medium heat. Once the oil is hot, add the falafel to the pan. These do freeze well, so you don't necessarily have to cook them all at once. Two of these patties makes a decent size wrap. Cook for about 4-5 minutes and then flip. The deeper brown they are, the crispier they will be.
Spread your wrap with either vegan mayo, ranch or tzatziki sauce. Add lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and the patties and you have yourself a delicious and healthy falafel wrap! Enjoy!
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