Taking my cues from Taïm, I make sure the balls are quite small—about a heaping tablespoon of mixture for each.
Falafel is typically deep-fried, but I find it much easier to shallow-fry at home. I fill a cast iron, carbon steel, or nonstick skillet with a couple of fingers’ worth of oil, then heat it up to 375°F before gently lowering the falafel into it. You may get scared that they’re going to fall apart, given how loose the mixture is, but don’t worry! I haven’t had a falafel ball disintegrate on me yet, and you won’t, either.
This is the kind of recipe that makes me feel kinda stupid (or at least very ignorant) for not knowing all of these years how simple and delicious it really is. I’d been so irrationally convinced that canned chickpeas must be easier to use than dried chickpeas that I’d never really stopped to consider that the opposite might be the case. I’m sure glad I did now, because, knowing how simple this falafel is to make (it’s just a few minutes of work once you’ve had the forethought to soak the chickpeas overnight), it’s going to go onto the regular dinnertime schedule.
