Servings: 22 falafels
Calories: 39.9kcal
Equipment
- air fryer
- food processor
- Chef knife
- Cutting board
- can opener
- mixing bowl
- Wooden spoon
- measuring spoons
- medium cookie scooper
- tray or plate
- aluminum foil
Ingredients
Falafels
- 2 cans garbonzo beans (15½ oz/can)
- ⅓ c fresh parsley leaves
- ¼ c fresh cilantro leaves
- ½ medium onion
- 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp dried dill
- 1½ tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp coriander
- ½ tsp cayenne powder
- salt to taste
- 3 tbsp King Arthur 00 flour
Falafel Sandwiches
- 2 low carb pita breads or flour tortillas
- lettuce leaves
- 1 medium tomato, chopped
- 2 tbsp chopped onion
- 3 tbsp tzatziki, homemade or store bought
Instructions
Making Falafels
- Open the cans of garbonzo beans and place them in a strainer to drain. Rinse them well under cold water. After they drain spread them out on paper towels to blot away the water.
- Rinse off a handful of fresh parsley and cilantro and then lay it on a paper towel to blot away the water.
- Remove the parsley and cilantro leaves from the stems.
- Take a half of a medium size onion and cut it into large chunks.
- Place the garbonzo beans, cilantro and parsley leaves, baking powder, dried dill, garlic powder, cumin, coriander, cayenne pepper and lemon juice into the bowl of the food processor.
- Pulse the food processor to finely chop the beans, parsley and cilantro leaves, onion chunks and mix in the spices, baking powder and lemon juice. Your are looking for the mixture to have a mealy texture. You do not want to pulverize it into a paste.
- Taste the mixture and add salt and tweak the other spices if you think it is necessary. Then pulse the mixture a few more times to mix in the salt and taste again.
- Transfer the falafel mixture to a mixing bowl. Add 3 tbsp of flour to the mixture and use a wooden spoon to even incorporate it into the falafel mixture. Don't skip this step it will help the mixture to hold together.
- Using a medium cookie scooper, portion out the falafel mixture onto a tray or plate. My falafel portions weighed around 0.9 oz. Then form the portions into patties. I chose to make patties because I though they would cook better in the air fryer.
- Place the falafel patties on a tray or plate and refrigerate for 30 min to help firm up the patties.
- Remove the patties from the refrigerator and spritz them with olive oil spray. Use a silicon brush to spread the spritzed olive oil over the patty surface.
- Place the olive oil spritzed surface of the patty face down on a foil lines air fryer baking tray. Then spritz the top surface with olive oil and use the silicon brush to spread the oil over the surface.
- Preheat the air fryer for 2 min at 400℉. Place the tray of falafels in the top position in the air fryer oven and air fry for 10-12. min. You are looking for the top surface to be lightly crisped and golden in color. If you have a bucket air fryer, set the temperature at 400℉ and check them often after 7-8 min in the air fryer.Look for them to crisp up.
- When the top side is done, flip the patties and air fryer the other side. After the patties have been air fried on both sides, transfer them to a plate. If you could not fit all the patties in the air fryer at once, the proceed to cook the second batch.
Making Falafel Sandwiches
- Rinse and dry off lettuce leaves. Place some lettuce leaves on a either a low carb pita bread or a flour tortilla.
- Place 3 or 4 falafel patties on the pita bread or tortilla. Sprinkle chopped tomato and onion on top of the falafel patties. Place dollops of homemade or store bought tzatziki on top of the chopped tomato and onion. Of course, you can cut the pita bread in half and place the sandwich contents inside of the pita pocket.
- Fold pita bread or tortilla around the falafel sandwich contents. Serve and enjoy.
- I froze the leftover air fried falafels.
Reheating the Falafels
- I found that putting frozen falafel in the air fryer to thaw and heat through, dried up them out.
- Place the frozen falafel on a microwaveable plate and microwaving them at 30% power until they thaw (about 30-40 sec depending on your microwave) and are hot ( about another 20 -30 sec) worked well. They remained crispy on the outside and the inside was moist and tender.
Notes
Trader Joe's organic garbonzo beans has one of the lowest sodium contents per serving of beans at 140 mg sodium for 1/2 c serving. That being said, the sodium content for the falafels is reasonable for a serving size of 3 or 4 falafels at 324 mg or 432 mg. When you add bread or a tortilla the sodium content jumps to 678 mg or 748 mg, respectively.
Finding lower sodium bread products is tough. The easiest way to lower the sodium content is to rehydrate dry garbonzo beans. 1⅛ c of dry garbonzo beans should rehydrate to around 3½ c of beans at 60 mg of sodium compared to 980 mg sodium for 3½ c of Trader Joe canned beans. And of course, you can use canned beans and use a salt substitute.
The nutritional info for each falafel patty is st the very bottom of the recipe card.
The nutritional info for a falafel sandwich made with a Mission carb balance pita is below.
cal. 252.3 kcal | fat 4.9 g | 1 g | carbs 51.1 g | fiber 23 g | tot. sugar 3.3 g | protein 16.5. g | sodium 678 g
The nutritional info for a falafel sandwich made with a Mission carb balance flour tortilla is below.
cal. 222.3 g | fat 3.9 g | sat. fat 1 g | carb. 45.1 g | fiber 21 g | tot. sugar 3.3 g | protein 12.5 g | sodium 748 mg
Nutrition
Serving: 1falafel | Calories: 39.9kcal | Carbohydrates: 7.2g | Protein: 2g | Fat: 0.3g | Sodium: 108mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 0.4g
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