— Cecilia Litvak

I don't have an exact one I can like link you to, but there's one that I do pretty regularly. Uh, and it's a little bit by eye to tell you the truth. So I, I typically, I'm gonna start out with a mushroom and onion. Um, so I'll chop up mushrooms and onions very, very fine, and start by sauteing those into a pan. Um, and then, uh, I will take cooked brown lentils, typically brown lentils, um, and add those to it, mash it up a little bit. Now you can also add other things like you want to, if you wanna do like a frozen spinach to it, just make sure that it's very, very well drained as you put it into it. Put the whole thing into a food processor with your lentils, your onions or mushrooms or spinach. And I usually add some different ingredients, like a garlic powder and onion powder. Uh, well, I guess you don't have to with the onions, but a, a garlic powder, I usually put a paprika into it as well too. Uh, if you wanna have a little spice, you can put some chipotle or something into it, a red pepper flake, um, and then form them into the balls. Um, like I'll usually put in a little bit of, oh, uh, breadcrumbs is one thing that I forgot to put in there. 'cause that's usually the binder that helps kind of keep everything together. Um, I'm usually gonna put a little bit of liquid into this mix as it's kind of blending up as well. I usually do a soy sauce and I might do a little aquafaba, which is aquafaba. It's just the water from, uh, uh, the chickpeas. And I'll blend that all up and then form it into a patty. Now the trick with these though is that, um, you will want to, uh, make sure that they don't dry out too much. So you can either saute 'em in a pan or put 'em in the oven. I typically start in the oven to be able to get them cooked through. If they're drying out a little bit, just add a little bit of veg stock to it, flip it over to be able to make sure you're getting the, the moisture that's trapped in the inside. And usually the breadcrumbs will help to retain some of that moisture at the same time too. So not an exact recipe. So definitely kind of eyeball it. If I had to take an exact, if I had to take a guess at kind of like what amounts I'm putting in, it's usually about two cups of brown lentils, probably about a half an onion, and maybe a cup, a little less than a cup of mushroom. Um, and then, you know, again, cook those off, blend them all in. I usually don't let the mushrooms, I'll let them release the liquid, but I usually don't let them dry out basically in the pan so they keep some of the moisture in it as well. Um, and then probably a half a cup of breadcrumb ish, you know, is the binder. And then smaller amounts on your tamari and your aqua favo. And then season to taste as you want too. Hope that helps.