Vegetarian Lentil Meatballs with Tomato Sauce
Ingredients
Lentil Meatballs:
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil
- 1 onion peeled and chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic peeled and sliced
- 500 g tinned lentils drained and rinsed
- ¼ cup plain flour
- ¼ cup breadcrumbs
- 1 egg
- 1 big bunch coriander
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 1 teaspoon of pepper
Tomato Sauce:
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil
- 2 cloves of garlic peeled and sliced
- 400 g of tinned plum tomatoes
- 1 big bunch of parsley roughly chopped
- 1 pinch of sugar
- Salt and pepper for seasoning
Instructions
Lentil Meatballs:
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Pre-heat your oven to 190 degrees C (375 degrees F).
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Pre-heat a frying pan over medium heat. Add you olive oil, then add your chopped onion. Fry for about 1-2 minutes, then add your garlic. Fry your onions and garlic for another minute until cooked and translucent. Turn the heat off and set aside.
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Set up a food processor with the blade attachment and add your sweated onions and garlic, your lentils, flour, breadcrumbs, your egg, coriander, cumin, paprika, salt and pepper. Blend until 80% bonded, where the mixture is not completely smooth, but just a little bit course.
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Get a bowl of water and lightly wet your hands. Use your moist hands to roll your lentil mixture into golf ball sized balls. Place your lentil meatballs on a tray lined with baking paper.
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Bake in your pre-heated oven for 20 minutes.
Tomato Sauce:
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Whilst the lentil balls are cooking, pre-heat a pot or a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil and your garlic. Fry the garlic for about half a minute then add your tinned crushed tomatoes.
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Break the plum tomatoes with a wooden spoon or spatula as you bring the sauce to a boil.
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Once the tomato sauce is boiling, turn the heat down and simmer the sauce for 5-10 minutes.
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Turn the heat off, add your parsley, a pinch of sugar and then season with salt and pepper.
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Serve the meatballs with the tomato sauce, and with an added side if you wish. Such as pasta, couscous, rice etc.
Recipe Notes
- Drain and rise your meatballs before using them to make your mixture.
- Don't fully blend the mixture 100% smooth, make sure it's a bit course so that it's easier to mould the mixture into balls.
- Make sure you have a binder, which can be an egg, or if you're vegan, you can grind 1½ tablespoons of chai seeds into a powder, mix that powder with 4½ tablespoons of water and then leave that mixture for 10 minutes until it becomes a thick, gloopy mixture.
- You can serve these meatballs with rice, pasta (this recipe would pair well with this Aglio e Olio recipe), zoodles (in this Zoodles with Meatballs post, I show you how to make zoodles without a spiralizer), couscous or you could make a meatball sub with them.
- To make this a gluten free recipe, just replace the flour with gluten free flour, and replace the breadcrumbs with gluten free breadcrumbs.
- You can store the meatballs in a large container and freeze these meatballs for a later day. Or you can store away individual portions of these meatballs with something like rice, pasta or couscous, if you want to use this recipe as a meal prep recipe.