Falafel
Crispy herb-packed chickpea fritters served in pita with tahini, pickles, and fresh salad — the street food of the Middle East, claimed by Egypt, loved across the Levant, and eaten everywhere from Cairo to Berlin.
- 1 cupdried chickpeas(soaked overnight, drained)
- 1/2 mediumyellow onion(roughly chopped)
- 4 clovesgarlic
- 1 cupfresh parsley(packed)
- 1/2 cupfresh cilantro(packed)
- 1 tspground cumin
- 1 tspground coriander
- 1/4 tspcayenne pepper
- 1/2 tspbaking powder
- 1 tspkosher salt
- 3 cupsvegetable oil(for frying)
Mixture can be made a day ahead and refrigerated. Formed falafel freeze well uncooked.
- 1Add soaked chickpeas, onion, garlic, parsley, and cilantro to food processor
- 2Pulse until finely ground but not pureed - mixture should have texture
- 3Add cumin, coriander, cayenne, baking powder, and salt, pulse to combine
- 4Refrigerate mixture 1 hour to firm up
- 5Form into 1.5-inch patties, about 2 tbsp each
- 6Heat oil to 350°F
- 7Fry falafel in batches, 3-4 minutes per side until deep golden brown
- 8Drain on paper towels, serve hot with tahini sauce and pickled vegetables
Use dried chickpeas soaked overnight - never canned. The mixture should hold together when squeezed but still be slightly loose.
Falafel is almost certainly Egyptian in origin, though the dish has been passionately claimed by so many countries that untangling its story requires some care. The most widely accepted scholarly position, reflected in Wikipedia and in historian Alexander Lee's research in History Today, is that the dish emerged in Alexandria — Egypt's principal port city and the centre of its culinary and cultural exchange. The original Egyptian version was made with fava beans and is still known in Egypt today as ta'amiya, meaning "a little piece of food," a name believed to connect to the Arabic word fūl (fava beans), from which "falafel" may itself derive. Some historians link the dish to Egypt's Coptic Christian community, who may have developed fried fava bean fritters as a meat substitute during Lent, the Coptic era spanning roughly the 3rd to 7th centuries AD. From Alexandria, falafel spread across Egypt and then migrated northward. According to History Today, it had reached what is now Lebanon shortly after the First World War, and in 1933, Mustafa Sahyoun opened a dedicated falafel shop in Beirut — one of the earliest documented. As the dish moved through the Levant, chickpeas replaced fava beans, reflecting local agriculture, and the recipe was refined with herbs, cumin, and coriander. The pita-wrapped falafel sandwich was popularized in the 1950s by Jewish Yemeni immigrants following Israel's independence. Turkish and Arab diaspora communities introduced falafel to Germany in the 1970s, and today it is a global street food staple.