The Root Cause

Roasted Vegetable Quinoa Falafel

Every weekend I take 3 Simple Actions To Be Real Food Ready for the week ahead. These simple actions allow me to make many different meals. One of these actions is roasting up a whole heap of mixed vegetables – usually potato, sweet potato, pumpkin, red onion, garlic, broccoli, zucchini. This Roasted Vegetable Quinoa Falafel recipe is one of the many ways I use some of the roasted vegetables.

These falafel make a great meal to encourage kids to help themselves to a host of fresh salad ingredients in the middle of the table and a delicious hommus dip. We served ours into a bowl, but you can also have them with wraps too. If you’re looking for great gluten free wraps, I order mine from The Wholefood Collective.

Ingredients

  • 1 small sized red onion
  • 1 large clove garlic
  • thumb nail sized piece of ginger
  • 1/2 cup fresh parsley
  • 150g dried chickpeas*
  • 1 and 1/2 cups roast mixed vegetables
  • 1 and 1/2 cups cooked quinoa
  • 1 tblspn lemon juice
  • 1 tblspn ground coriander
  • 1 tblspn ground cumin
  • 1 tspn herbamare salt (or good quality salt)
  • pepper to taste
  • 3 tblspns gluten free flour
  • Olive or coconut oil for frying

* you can substitute with 400g of chickpeas but the mixture will be a bit mushier

Method

  1. Soak and cook chickpeas as per instructions on pack (I soak overnight, drain then rinse, then cover with water bring to boil and simmer for about 2 hours)
  2. Place onion, garlic, ginger and parsley into food processor. Blitz til chopped finely
  3. Add rest of the ingredients and pulse until a thick paste
  4. Pop paste mixture into fridge 30 mins, preferably 1 hour
  5. Pour enough of your oil of choice to the frying pan so there is enough to cover the base of the pan and come up half way on your falafels
  6. Heat oil over medium heat until its hot not boiling
  7. Take a spoonful of the mixture and form a ball – I use an ice cream scoop so I get consistency in the size of the falafels or you could use 2 soup spoons – one to scoop out and the other over the top of the mixture
  8. Add the ball to the hot oil and cook one side for 3 minutes, turn and cook the other side for 3 minutes – if it looks like the falafel first side is too cooked (ie. burnt), turn the heat down to low
  9. Drain falafel on paper towel, serve and gobble them up!

Another 2 Ways

  • Throw these puppies in a lunchbox as a finger food with some hommus to dip into
  • Make the falafel larger size like a hamburger pattie to make an awesome vegetarian hamburger

Just a reminder, you don’t need to be a master chef, or have a big spotless kitchen to make awesome nutritious meals or snacks for your family.

 

This recipe contains links to products we order from The Wholefood Collective. They support our mission to Transform Children’s Health and pay us a small fee if you purchase using these links. You still get these great wholefood products for the same great price. We thank you for using the links because you’re helping us to continue to provide loads of free content such as this recipe. Please know we only ever share information about products we use ourselves and companies who share the same values around children’s health as we do.