No Half Measures

30 Apr 2020

Sometime near the end of 2019 I tried to make baked falafel, and it didn’t go well. I used chickpeas from a can instead of dried, and I added way too much chickpea liquid. Of course this was when I’d invited a (thankfully very patient) guest over for dinner, and instead of creating beautiful falafel on the first go, we ended up creating a falafel stir-fry of sorts.

Determined to try again, I looked for recipes that used canned chickpeas instead of dried, because if I’m honest dried chickpeas sounds like way too much work.

I did find one, but instead of baking them on a sheet, I had the brilliant idea to use a waffle maker. Sounds amazing, right? You can use a specialized piece of equipment to pseudo-fry and cook waffles made of falafel batter! Thus, falwaffels.

I used this recipe, with the exception that I don’t always have parsley (it’ll be fine, I promise!) and instead of oat flour I used gram (chickpea) flour so as to maintain the flavor.

One tip is to blend everything except the chickpeas to break down the parsley, and then add half the chickpeas, blend and then add the rest. This lets you control the final texture while making sure all of the initial ingredients are well-mixed. The secret is to use lots - and I mean lots of oil on the waffle maker. This is our old waffle maker, and the non-stick surface was a little worn out, so it already needed special care. Falwaffels need to cook much longer than their typical waffle counterparts, but through trial and error we pretty much figured it out.

You do need to wait for the inside of the falwaffel to finish cooking, or it will come apart. In our waffle maker that’s about 10 minutes.

The result is crispy and delicious! It doesn’t have the crunchy exterior texture of a deep-fried falafel, but it does capture the flavor and texture of the inside. I’ve served it with a homemade tahini-yogurt sauce (really just tahini, yogurt, olive oil and lemon juice) and mixed cut veggies.

I did try this recipe in the oven as written, after much prodding. It works out quite well that way too! The trick is not adding too much liquid, completely opposite my first try.