Cooking vs Soaking Lentils for Falafel

Question

So most traditional falafel recipes call for "soaked chickpeas", and particularly warn against using the canned version. I've been experimenting with making falafel out of lentils (mostly because they are more likely to be in my house), but have mostly struggled.
One key difference between the two is that many lentil-based falafel recipes say to cook the lentils first, but of course this makes them very soft (much softer then soaked chickpeas), and they tend to dissolve when fried (although they can be baked this way).
So, I'm really interested in the difference between soaking and cooking for chickpeas vs lentils. Are they totally equivalent? Is there any danger in soaking lentils (but not cooking them further) before turning them into falafel? Does frying uncooked (but soaked) chickpeas result in "cooked" chickpeas, or are you basically just eating raw chickpeas?

FuzzyChef · Accepted Answer

If you want to make "falafel" out of lentils, then you should look to folks who actually make deep-fried lentil balls regularly, and that's Indians.  Dal Vada, balls of lentils that are deep fried in vegetable oil, are always made with lentils of some kind that have been soaked by not cooked.  Cooked lentils, like cooked peas, will not hold together.
My suggestion is that you look through the various dal vada recipes online, and change the spicing on them to match falafel spices (cumin, onion, garlic, parsley, and Aleppo pepper).
However, one thing to notice is that most recipes use chana dal (black chickpeas), moong dal (mung beans), or black-eyed peas. So it may still be the case that trying to get patties to hold together using grey/red lentils is very difficult, even if you don't cook them.

Sarah BDnO · Answer

I don't have experience with making falafels with lentils, but I experimented making falafels with cooked chickpeas (canned or not) and it never worked, they dissolved when frying as you explained. So you really need to use dry chickpeas that you will soak overnight (recipes say about 12h, I've left them a night and part of the following day it was fine). You don't eat them raw though, because you will then process them and your mixture will cook when frying.
There is no danger in soaking lentils, on the contrary like many legumes it is recommended to soak them before cooking to to make them easier to digest.
Most of the lentil falafels recipes I checked said to cook them before and then baked, so it seems that using only soaked lentils might not work very well or not be very good!

Cooking vs Soaking Lentils for Falafel

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