There are 100s of variations on falafel. This is a good, and fairly simple version. Just remember: to get that crunchy, loose textured falafel, you need to use raw soaked chickpeas, not chickpeas from a can.
Full recipe below video.
Makes about 15 falafel.
250g dried chickpeas (soaked overnight in plenty of water)
1 onion, peeled and cut into chunks
3 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 very heaped teaspoon of cumin
2 fresh green chillies, roughly chopped (or 1tsp chilli flakes)
Small handful coriander
Small handful parsley
Around 2-3tsp plain flour
Oil for frying.
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- Drain chickpeas and lay them out on a clean tea towel for at least 10 minutes, but preferably half an hour. This allows them to sweat out any excess water that they have taken on while soaking. If you don't do this, they will sweat the water into your mix and you'll need to use loads of extra flour to soak it up.
- Blitz up your onion and garlic in a food processor until it's a rough puree. Set aside.
- Blitz up the chickpeas together with the chilli, parsley and coriander. The chickpeas should come down to the size of rough bread crumbs and start to stick together a bit. Blitz in several batches if you're using a mini processor (as I am in the video).
- Mix your onion and garlic puree with the chickpea mix. Season generously with salt and pepper and stir through the cumin.
- Try forming the mixture into a small patty in the palms of your hands. You want it to just hold its shape, but still be delicate. You will probably need 2-3 teaspoons of plain flour to achieve this.
- add the flour a little at a time and check that the mix just holds. The less flour the better.
- You can buy a falafel shaper really cheaply if you can find one, but I find that squeezing the mix between the middle of the palms of my hands gets exactly the right shape. Ultimately - it doesn't much matter. They're delicious whatever shape you make them.
- Once you've made your falafel patties, lower them very carefully into oil at around 170c. Fry until a deep golden brown.
- Serve in a wrap, a salad, as a snack with dips...or just eat them as they are. They're so tasty and satisfying they rarely last more than a few minutes when I make them.