Lentil Balls

I've never followed a recipe to make Lentil balls. The ingredients are approximate, and very flexible.

Lentil Balls

Ingredients

• 1 cup dark lentils (red or yellow lentils are too soft)
• 3-4 cloves of garlic
• chunk of ginger
• 1 cup finely chopped onion (1/2 large white/Spanish onion)
• Optional: Finely chopped green or yellow peppers
• Optional: Finely chopped mushroom
• Optional: 3-4 (or more) tablespoons of Catalina dressing or ketchup
• Optional: Pinch of ground cumin seed
• Optional: Tablespoon of lemon juice
• 2-3 teaspoons Vegeta or other seasoning salt to taste
• 1 cup (or more) breadcrumbs
  • or substitute ground flax seed to make gluten-free lentil balls
• 1/4 cup cooking oil
• 1/4 cup soy sauce + 1/4 cup water

Preparation

1. Put lentils in a saucepan, cover with 3 cups water.
2. Boil the lentils for 15 minutes until they've expanded to about 3x their volume.
3. Drain, but keep the liquid.
4. Remove 1/3 of the lentils to a mixing bowl.
5. Add peeled garlic and ginger to the saucepan.
6. Blend to a fine sauce with a Wizzer (hand blender).
   • Add drained liquid as needed to get a texture like ketchup.
7. Add lentil sauce to mixing bowl.
8. Add chopped onion and optional veggies, Catalina dressing and Vegeta.
9. Mix by hand, adding breadcrumbs.
10. Form the mixture into balls the size of ping-pong balls (or a bit smaller)

    The result should be a fairly dry mixture that hangs together to form ping-pong sized balls. Too crumbly? Add more Catalina dressing or drained liquid. Too squishy? Add more breadcrumbs.

11. Heat a frying pan to a really high temperature.
12. Add cooking oil. The lentil and breadcrumb absorb lots of moisture, so be generous.
13. Roll the lentil balls into the frying pan as if you're bowling (to ensure the oil coats the lentil balls)
14. Reduce heat, cook for about 10 minutes, rolling the lentil balls regularly.

    When the lentil balls have a nice brown crust:

15. Add Soy sauce + water.
16. Roll the lentil balls for 30 seconds, remove from heat.

Preparation time: 45 - 60 minutes, depending on how many lentil balls need to be formed. If there are many lentil ball makers it'll go faster!

The really nice thing when cooking lentil balls is that you can eat the mixture before frying. The better for cleaning utensils!

--Bob.