Vegan meatballs are one of the dishes that have evolved the most as we have added new products to our vegetable pantry, especially in the vegetable proteins section.

Meatballs, like hamburgers and other similar formats, are great to make in quantity, either alone or in batch cooking, and freeze. You don’t have to fry them: you can sauté them and cook them in sauce, you can make them in the oven or also in the air fryer. The options, as we see, have also increased in the way of cooking them.

How to make vegan meatballs

We have several options to make meatballs without meat or eggs:

• Vegetable meatballs, without protein. For me they are the least interesting, and it may seem like we are consuming protein when we are not.
• Lentil meatballs and other legumes. These are the most classic and usually also contain cereals, in the form of flour. They have good consistency and are cheap and easy.
• Tofu, seitan or tempeh meatballs. First generation vegetable meats, those that have always been around, are a good base for meatballs.
• Textured soy meatballs or other textured vegetable proteins such as chickpea or pea. The latter, the textured pea protein, is my favorite option when making meatballs, since it compacts practically on its own and is ideal if you don’t want to use flour.
• New minced vegetable meatballs or meat-style vegetable burgers. With the arrival of new vegetable meats, we find chopped vegetables that we use to make meatballs. very similar to animal meatwithout needing to make almost any changes to the recipes, apart from using flax egg instead of animal egg. If they are purchased, this option may be less recommended for everyday use if it is ultra-processed, so I recommend checking the label and paying special attention to the salt, the type of oil and fats, and the nutritional values.

The ingredients with which we can make vegan or vegetarian meatballs are very varied and, therefore, their accompaniments should also be. In general, removing the vegetable meatballs, the rest They need to be accompanied by a good portion of vegetableswhether sautéed, grilled, in cream or in a salad.

In the event that we want a pasta dish with meatballs, Remember that you can add sautéed vegetables and that the proportion of pasta must be the portion you need. That is, the pasta is an accompaniment, and not the other way around.

Vegan Meatball Recipes

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1. Lentil and oatmeals

They are the easiest vegan meatballs to make because they really need very few ingredients. You can also make them with other legumes.

Ingredients:

• 150 g cooked brown rice
• 150 g drained cooked lentils
• 1 tablespoon rice or chickpea flour
• rice flour for breading
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• extra virgin olive oil to cook them
• salt and black pepper to taste
• the mix of spices that you like the most or fit (optional)

Preparation:

1. Both rice and lentils They have to be well drained. The liquid/moisture they may contain will determine some quantities of this recipe that may vary.
2. Shreds rice and lentils. You can do it by hand or with a food processor.
3. Add the chickpea flourthe spices and the olive oil and mix well. You shouldn’t have a cream, but a dough.
4. Chill the dough in the refrigerator at least a couple of hours.
5. You form the meatballs, flour them and that’s it!

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2. Tempeh meatballs

If you don’t know how to cook tempeh, this recipe is one good option to get out of marinated tempeh grilled If you want, you can flour them to seal them, but it is usually not necessary.

Ingredients:

• 250g tempeh
• 100 g chickpea flour
• 50 g nutritional yeast
• 1 flax egg (1 tablespoon of crushed flax seeds and 3 of water)
• 1 tablespoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• salt to taste
• oil for frying or baking.

Preparation:

1. Prepare the flax egg so that the mucilage appears, the gel that will help us make these meatballs. To do this, put the seeds in the water and let them rest minimally.
2. Chop the tempeh very finely and mash or grind it with a food processor.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients and make a compact dough.
4. You can add more spices; There are many mixtures and preparations with spices that work very well.
5. Shape the meatballs and mark them, fry them or cook them as you like.

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3. Very easy textured pea meatballs

The textured pea has a very interesting feature: it practically compacts itself. That makes it extremely easy to make meatballs with this textured protein. You will need more or less chickpea flour, cornstarch, rice flour or another compacting agent depending on the brand.

Ingredients:

• 100 g textured pea protein
• 3 tablespoons chickpea flour
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• hot water or vegetable broth to hydrate

Preparation:

1. Moisturizes textured protein with water or vegetable broth, better if it is hot.
2. Drain as much as possible, so that there is no liquid left. You will always have time to add. The textured protein should be almost dissolved; If not, you can finish crushing with a fork.
3. Mix all the ingredients well and make a dough.
4. let it rest a few hours in the refrigerator.
5. Shape into meatballs and you can cook them. You can flour and score them, fry them or bake them.

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4. Mushroom sauce for meatballs

Although you can use homemade tomato sauce or ratatouille, one of my favorite options is to use a mushroom sauce with one of the batches of meatballs. This way, even if we eat the same meatballs twice, we will have the sensation of changing dishes.

Ingredients for 4 servings:

• 200 grams of mushrooms
• 1 medium white onion
• 100 ml oat milk
• 50 ml vegetable broth
• 50 ml of light olive oil or 50 g of margarine without hydrogenated fats
• salt and ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch or some type of flour (optional)

Preparation:

1. Peels and chop the onion. Clean and cut the mushrooms as small as possible.
2. Saute the onion first.
3. Add the mushrooms and cook for a few minutes.
4. Add the liquid part and the spices and let it cook over medium heat.
5. If you don’t want to add a thickener, blend half the sauce. If you are going to use it to finish cooking some meatballs, do not let all the liquid be consumed or add another 50 ml of broth so that they do not end up dry later.