- Hi, I'm Yumna, and today we're making falafel.
I know a lot of you guys might call it falafel,
but in Lebanon we call it falafel,
and so that's kind of like the correct Arabic way to say it.
This is a very popular iconic street food in Lebanon
and all over the Middle East, actually.
And if you buy it store made,
sometimes it's just filled with a lot of oil,
a lot of preservatives.
So it's really easy to actually make it at home.
You just need very few staple ingredients,
throw it all together in a blender, fry it up or bake it,
and you've got falafel.
Falafel is so great because it's vegan, it's gluten-free,
and it's very filling as well.
So you get a nice source of protein that's all plant-based.
That's the first step here.
We're going to get the chickpeas prepared.
This is what I buy, dry chickpeas or garbanzo beans.
And if you look at them, they are pretty stiff,
they're really small,
and they're kind of look like they're shrunken.
So these are dry, they're not cooked,
but we're gonna do is we want to soak them.
And so when you soak them overnight,
these have been soaking overnight for 24 hours,
you can see the difference in the texture.
I'll hold them both of them up together.
So you can see the difference.
And overnight the chickpeas literally grew times two.
So they doubled in size
and now they're actually ready for the recipe.
We don't want to actually cook them,
all you want to do is soak them in some water overnight.
You can also put some baking soda in it if you want to,
but that's not really necessary.
A very important step is a lot of people ask me,
"Well, can I just use canned chickpeas?
What's the point of actually soaking these?
If you're gonna get them to soak and plump up,
why not just use canned chickpeas?"
And it's very important not to use canned chickpeas
because if you do,
they actually have a lot of moisture in them,
there's a lot of water content when they're canned.
So you want to avoid doing that
because with all that moisture in the chickpeas,
you have to compensate for it by adding more flour.
And adding more flour
just completely ruins the texture of the falafel
and the way it's actually supposed to be made.
Now that we have the chickpeas soaked
and we know the importance of using soaked dry chickpeas
and not canned chickpeas,
we're gonna go ahead and get started.
All of this in water,
I'm going to just drain it and rinse it up.
So we've got the drained chickpeas
(chickpeas rumbling)
and you can also take a paper towel.
Take a paper towel and just dry it up a little bit.
It doesn't have to be completely dry,
but just run the paper towel through it
just to kind of absorb any of that extra liquid in there.
(chickpeas rumbling)
And now we're ready to make the falafel.
So I use a 13 cup, or 11 or 13 cup food processor.
And for this much,
it actually doesn't fit the whole recipe in there.
So I just divided in two, and I make two batches.
You can also cut the batch in half if you wanted to.
So we're gonna go ahead and drop the chickpeas in here.
(food processor clattering)
All right, so that's the chickpeas
that are now in the food processor.
And before I add the herbs and the spices
and the onions and garlic,
what we want to do is grate the chickpeas
so they're nice then paste-like.
So we'll get started with that.
(food processor whirring)
All right, so, the chickpeas are ready.
If you look here,
it's kind of like powder-like and grain-like,
and so the chickpeas have just been cut a little bit finer.
So this is exactly what we're looking for.
That's the consistency that you want.
And so now what we're gonna do
is add the rest of the ingredients to the falafel mix.
We're going to use...
I'm basically halving everything.
So we're going to use some cilantro.
I'm gonna use about half of everything.
We'll also use some parsley.
If you don't like parsley or you don't like cilantro,
you can do only one of the kinds.
I like the mix of both of them
because cilantro has a more stronger tastes
and parsley just gives it a nice color
and just a more mild fragrance to it.
So this is the parsley.
We're also going to add a garlic clove in here.
And probably half a small onion.
We'll add also just a tablespoon of flour
just to kind of help bind everything together.
The flour is not really crucial in here,
but I like to add it
just to kind of suck up any of that moisture.
So we'll just do about a tablespoon of it in here.
And now for the seasoning.
Definitely add some salt.
So in the half mixture,
I'm going to put half a teaspoon of salt.
This is cumin.
We'll do half a teaspoon of cumin.
And then also some coriander.
You can also add allspice, if you like, or seven spice,
you can add some other types of seasonings
like cayenne pepper if you want it a little bit spicy.
I just like to stick to these
basic salt, pepper, cumin, and coriander.
Also add some pepper to it.
(container clanking)
And the seasoning can be eyeball too,
doesn't have to be exact.
These are some good guidelines for you to follow,
but it doesn't have to be exact.
And you can add more or less of any seasonings
that you like.
So now we have everything in the blender
and we are going to get the food processor going.
(food processor whirring)
Okay, let's check up on it.
All right, it looks like it's all ready.
If you look at this here,
it's got a nice, beautiful green color.
You can see that the onions are fine now,
you can't even see them,
the parsley and cilantro are nice and grated.
And this is the kind of consistency we're looking for.
It's pasty and moist, and it kind of sticks together.
If you push down on it,
you can see that it kind of keeps the form
whatever you push on it.
And that's when you know that it's ready.
It's not too dry, it's not too moist, it's perfect.
If you do find that it's looking a little wet,
this is the part where you can add a little bit more flour.
And if you are noticing that it's looking to dry,
you can add a little bit of tablespoons of water.
So it's pretty flexible at this point,
you can kind of change it up and work with it
to get this kind of texture right here.
Okay, so this is the mixture now in the bowl.
And you can kind of see what it looks like,
kind of get a better view of the consistency
that you're looking for.
So it's bright and green, it's nice and pasty.
And now you can go ahead and form the falafel balls.
But what I would recommend
is storing it in the fridge for an hour or two hours
just to let all the ingredients just meld well together,
and it's just gonna give you a much better recipe
in the long run.
So we'll go ahead and store this in the fridge
and we'll come back to it in about a couple of hours.
All right, it's been a couple hours
and the falafel mixture has been resting in the fridge.
So now it's ready to make them into balls.
And before we do that,
I like to add a little bit of baking soda to it
and just give everything a good mix again.
The baking soda will just help to make them fluffy.
It's not completely necessary,
but I like doing this right before I fry them.
And I'm gonna show you the difference
between frying them and baking them.
So both of them are still gonna taste exactly the same,
but the texture and the color is gonna look very different
when you fry versus baking it.
And so I'll give you options for both.
In order to make these, I'm gonna use this thing
which is literally called a falafel scooper.
So it's made just for falafel.
It gets the perfect little patties on
that you normally see at restaurants.
You can also use a meatballer, you can use a cookie scooper,
you can just use your hands even.
So I'm gonna take this, place it in here,
and then just pat it down,
and then it pops right out.
You can see just makes perfect little circles
that are about an inch and a half in diameter.
So I'm gonna go ahead and place these here.
And I'm just gonna create two trays,
one for baking one for frying.
Okay, so I just finished making all the falafel patties.
And now what we're gonna do
is we're going to fry some of them
while the others are baking in the oven.
So I have in here an inch of grape seed oil,
which is really good for frying,
and I'm just gonna very carefully drop them in.
And you can see, as soon as I dropped them in,
there's a little bit of a bubbly action happening.
I prefer to do four at a time
and I don't like to crowd the pan too much.
Just throw a four in there.
And I should probably do this using a slotted spoon
just to be safer.
What we're looking for is two to three minutes per side,
and we want them to get a nice brown color on the outside.
So you can kind of try to start taking a little peeks
to see what it's looking like,
or we'll just wait for it to release itself.
It's also very popular
to put some sesame seeds on the outside of these.
So you can do that on some of them
and just pat it down if you do.
I'll put it on some and not others.
Beautiful dark brown color.
That's exactly what we're looking for.
And it's okay if the inside is a little bit green still.
That is no problem.
So let's go ahead and start flipping these.
And you can tell that they're starting to brown
because non of the sides of them is brown,
so there's no need to even peek through.
And you can see,
this is exactly what we're looking for right here.
You see how it's a dark brown,
nice golden brown color on the falafel.
That's exactly what we're looking for.
And then that's the time to flip them.
So wait two to three minutes on the other side as well
and you can take a peek
and just see once they're getting that golden color to them.
All right, so I just checked on it
and it's also golden brown on the other side as well.
So what we'll do is when you take them out of the oil,
put them on a paper towel,
so that can absorb a lot of that extra excess oil
that we don't need to eat.
So we'll take this and just place it on a paper towel.
All right, so the fried falafel is done,
and this is what it looks like.
Beautiful golden brown,
and there's some sesame seeds on top of them.
This is the baked falafel, which still is pretty beautiful,
but I think just texture-wise and color-wise,
the fried one just wins it over for me.
If you are trying to watch your oil intake,
the baked one is a great way to go, and still really soft,
and it still tastes the same way.
It's still the same mixture, essentially.
So what we like to do in my family
is we like to make sandwiches with this.
So you can just take this and dip it in there
if you wanted something kind of more low carb,
but we love making sandwiches.
So I'm gonna go ahead and put it on a pita.
So we'll line up the falafel.
And we don't go cheap, I mean, we line up like four
and they're nice and hardy.
And then also put in some tomatoes,
go ahead and make a nice sandwich out of it,
some onions, some pickles.
These are really small Arabic-style types of pickles,
which go really well with the falafel.
And then finally,
what we like to do is we'd like to add tahini sauce to it.
So I'll link it below so you guys can make this.
It's only four ingredients.
It's tahini paste, garlic, lemon juice, and salt.
I mean, that's all it takes
and you whip it all together
and it just forms this smooth nutty garlicky tangy
perfect dressing that goes with the falafel.
So I like to just add it on top
and finally just put in some fresh parsley.
You can also put in some lettuce, if you wanted to,
some turnips, there's lots of different vegetables
that you can do with this.
So now can eat this.
Roll it all up and have it like a sandwich,
and you're good to go.
And this is what it looks like.
You've got all kinds of colors in here,
all kinds of texture.
And this sandwich is so yummy.
You can also take this and toast it if you wanted to,
or just enjoy it as is with a side of fries,
with a side of salad, whatever you like.
I hope you try this falafel recipe,
whether you make it baked, whether you make it fried,
just let me know how you like it.
And I hope you share some pictures with me
and share some comments.
And let me know if you enjoyed this
and if you think it's better than the restaurant kind.
My video man, do you wanna try some falafel?
You wanna try the sandwich?
Just a regular one, all right.
We're gonna give him a nice fried one,
I think he's going to enjoy them.
I'm gonna go ahead and dip it for him in some tahini sauce
and see how he likes it.
All right, here we go.
Awesome, we got a thumbs up from him.
I'm so glad to hear that you like it,
and I hope you guys like it too
and I hope you make this recipe,
share it with your friends and family,
and share it with me too
'cause I love to see your recreations.
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