Falafel Wrap
Dried chickpeas soaked overnight and never cooked before blending. Tinned chickpeas make a paste that falls apart in the oil, and there is no way around it.
- Prep
- 30 min
- Cook
- 20 min
- Resting
- 12 hr 30 min
- Total
- 13 hr 20 min
- Serves
- 4
- Revisions
- 1
Allergens
- Cereals containing gluten
- Sesame
Named from the ingredients as written, including those carried in from sub-recipes. This is not a guarantee — check the labels on what you actually buy, and note that a product’s recipe can change.
Ingredients
Serves
Falafel
Sauce
To build
Method
Falafel
Soak the dried chickpeas in plenty of cold water for at least 12 hours. They will roughly triple in weight.
Do not cook them, and do not use a tin. Falafel is made from raw soaked chickpeas: the starch is still intact, so it binds when it hits hot oil and cooks in the same two minutes as the outside. Cooked or tinned chickpeas make a wet paste with nothing to bind it, and it disintegrates in the pan.
Drain them very well and spread them on a tea towel for 10 minutes to dry.
Blitz the chickpeas, onion, garlic, parsley, coriander, cumin, ground coriander and salt in a food processor in short pulses.
Stop when it looks like coarse wet couscous and holds together when squeezed in a fist. A smooth purée gives dense, pasty falafel.
Chill the mixture for 30 minutes.
Stir in the bicarbonate of soda and the flour just before frying. The bicarbonate goes in late because it starts working immediately and gives the inside its light, open texture.
Shape into 16 balls or patties, pressing firmly.
Heat the oil to 175C and fry six at a time for 3 to 4 minutes, turning, until deep brown and crisp.
Drain on a rack.
Sauce
Whisk the tahini with the lemon juice and garlic — it will seize into a stiff paste, which is expected.
Add the iced water a tablespoon at a time, whisking, until it loosens into a smooth pourable cream. Tahini always seizes before it loosens; the trick is to keep going rather than to add oil.
To build
Warm the flatbreads, then build with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, pickles, four falafel each and a generous pour of tahini sauce.
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What to expect
- Taste
Herbal and green first — there is a lot of parsley and coriander in it — then cumin, then the earthiness of the chickpea. The tahini is nutty and slightly bitter and the lemon and pickles cut through everything.
- Aroma
Frying herb and cumin, which is quite unlike the smell of anything else here.
- Texture
The reason to make your own. A shattering crust over a light, open, almost fluffy middle. Shop-bought falafel are usually dense all the way through.
- Sound
The fry, and the crack when one is split.
- How the flavour moves
Crust and salt, then herb and spice, then a long earthy finish with the tahini's bitterness behind it and lemon clearing the end.
- Serve it
Hot falafel, cold salad, room-temperature sauce.
- Goes with
Pickled turnip or red cabbage, chilli sauce, and a very cold drink. Mint tea afterwards.
Cook's notes
- Difficulty
Moderate, and the difficulty is entirely in the first instruction.
- Cost
Very low. Dried chickpeas are among the cheapest protein there is.
- Equipment
A food processor, a deep pan, a thermometer and a wire rack.
- When to make it
A weekend, with the soaking started the night before.
- Best season
None.
- You know it is done when
Deep even brown with a slightly craggy surface. Split one open: the inside should be bright green and light rather than dense and pale.
- And it feels like
A crisp shell and an open, almost fluffy interior. Dense and pasty means the mixture was blended too smooth.
- Food safety
Raw soaked chickpeas contain lectins and must be properly cooked, which frying does. Do not eat the raw mixture. Hot oil is the other hazard: a deep pan no more than a third full, nothing wet going in, a lid within reach.
- Where it goes wrong
- Tinned or cooked chickpeas, which is the only unrecoverable mistake in the recipe.
- Blending to a smooth purée, which gives dense pasty falafel.
- Wet chickpeas, which spit and loosen the mixture.
- Adding the bicarbonate early, so its lift is spent before frying.
- Frying too many at once and dropping the oil temperature.
- Draining on paper rather than a rack.
- If it does go wrong
Falling apart in the oil: they were cooked chickpeas, or the mixture was too wet — chill it longer and add another tablespoon of flour. Dense: over-blended. Dark outside, raw inside: the oil was too hot. Greasy: too cool. Tahini seized into a solid paste: keep adding iced water a spoonful at a time and it will loosen — this always happens and is not a fault.
- Making it ahead
The mixture a day ahead, without the bicarbonate. Shaped raw falafel freeze well.
- Keeping it
Fried falafel keep two days in the fridge. The raw mixture keeps a day.
- Reheating
An oven or air fryer at 190C for 6 minutes. They will not be quite as good and will be perfectly acceptable.
- Freezing
Freeze them shaped and raw on a tray, then bagged, for two months. Fry from frozen at 170C for a minute longer.
- Leftovers
Crumbled over a salad, or in a bowl with hummus and rice.
- Scaling it
Doubles easily; fry in sixes regardless.
- Substitutions
Split dried fava beans instead of chickpeas make Egyptian ta'amiya, or a half-and-half mix. Do not substitute tinned anything. The falafel can be baked at 200C with a good brushing of oil for 25 minutes — they will be drier and denser and it is a real compromise rather than an equal option.
- Dietary swaps
Vegan and dairy free as written. Contains sesame from the tahini, which cannot be removed, and gluten from the flatbread and the 2 tbsp of flour — gram flour and a gluten-free flatbread make the whole thing gluten free. Nut free.
- Shopping for it
A Middle Eastern grocer for dried chickpeas, tahini and pickles, all of which will be better and cheaper than a supermarket's. Tahini varies enormously — a good one is pourable and nutty rather than solid and bitter.
- Keeping the cost down
Dried chickpeas are a fraction of the price of tinned and are required here anyway. This is the cheapest meal in the collection.
- Sustainability
Pulses are among the lowest-footprint protein sources there is, and they fix nitrogen in the soil, so they improve the ground they grow in rather than depleting it. This is the lowest-impact main course in the collection by a clear margin and one of the cheapest, which is a rare combination worth stating plainly. The frying oil is the only real consideration: strain and reuse it, and bin it rather than pouring it down the sink.
- Nutrition
High in protein and fibre, and genuinely nutritious apart from the frying. Chickpeas and tahini together give a complete protein.
- Worth it?
One rule — never a tin — and the rest is easy.
Where it comes from
- Origin
Disputed. Egypt and the Levant both have strong claims.
- Also called
Falafel; ta'amiya in Egypt, where it is made with fava beans.
- Said out loud
fa-LA-fel.
- What the name means
The etymology is not settled; a derivation from an Arabic plural of filfil, pepper, is often given and is not certain.
- History
The most commonly repeated account has falafel beginning in Egypt as a fava bean fritter, possibly among Coptic Christians as a Lent food, and spreading north through the Levant where chickpeas replaced or joined the beans. The documentary evidence for this is thin, and the dish's history is bound up with a live political argument about national attribution across the region. It is a food eaten daily by many peoples, and describing it as belonging to one of them is a claim this site is not in a position to make.
- Why it matters
Street food across the Middle East and, since the later twentieth century, one of the most widespread vegetarian dishes in Europe and North America.
- When it is eaten
Street food, lunch, and one of the better things to cook for a mixed group where some people do not eat meat.
- The traditional way
Raw soaked pulses ground with herbs and spices, shaped and deep fried.
- How it changed
Chickpeas alongside or instead of fava beans as it moved north; the wrap is a modern street format.
- Regional variations
Egyptian ta'amiya uses split fava beans and is greener and softer. Palestinian and Lebanese versions are chickpea-based. Some places add a spoonful of ground coriander seed, some a pinch of cardamom.
- How this version differs
Nothing unorthodox. The recipe is written to make the raw-chickpea rule impossible to miss, because it is the one thing that determines whether the dish works at all.
- Sources and credit
None that can be made responsibly.
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Chickpea and Spinach Stew
Couscous Salad
Lentil Soup
Quinoa Salad
Middle Eastern
Lunch
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Vegan
Vegetarian