The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

First try with falafels

Mung bean falafels

Preparing for falafelsI've had falafels a few times in restaurants, but only nibbled because I had no clue what was in them and wasn't sure if they passed the good-for-you test. This week, I made my own for the first time and discovered that falafels are a unique combination of very high-quality ingredients...and deep frying.

What makes the ingredients so good? You basically begin to sprout the beans (traditionally garbanzos or favas, but we used mung beans) by soaking them for 24 hours, so they probably have many of the nutritional qualities of sprouts. To that, you add herbs and spices, then fry just barely long enough to cook the centers. (As this was my first learning experience, I actually didn't quite cook some of the centers --- smaller balls or flattening them into cakes would be called for next time around.)

I used this recipe, slightly tweaked, and found the result very tasty, although perhaps a bit higher in onion than I'd like. For our next experiment, Mark suggested replacing half of the beans with canned salmon, then frying like cakes rather than deep-frying. Good thing we've got more mung beans to experiment with!



Anna Hess's books
Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

Or explore more posts by date or by subject.

About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.


I love falafel! It's one of my favorites. I like to make it with chickpeas. So tasty. It's been quite a while since I've had it. I made need to make it again :)
Comment by Torina from Tubaville Wed Jan 7 10:46:11 2015
That felafel sounds so good! I would love to try it with salmon in the mix. I did think that sure was a lot of onion in your food processor.
Comment by Brandy Sun Jan 11 15:33:52 2015





profile counter myspace



Powered by Branchable Wiki Hosting.

Required disclosures:

As an Amazon Associate, I earn a few pennies every time you buy something using one of my affiliate links. Don't worry, though --- I only recommend products I thoroughly stand behind!

Also, this site has Google ads on it. Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to a website. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to users based on their visit to various sites. You can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting this site.