¼ each mirin and gochujang (your local Korean market will have a wide variety of flavors. I like the one for pork best for this, but they have a lot of them) 1/8 cup soy sauce
2 tsp minced garlic
1 thumb sized piece of ginger, peeled and minced
Extra bread crumbs if it’s really loose
Pre mixing
Mix all together, form into golf sized balls, spray with oil, and bake at 350F for about 30 minutes,
Gochujang Lentilballs literally chilling out…
About 25 minutes in, you can sprinkle them with sesame seeds.
One thing we eat a ton of are pulses. Pulses are the best- high protein, high fiber, low fat, cheap and taste good. The perfect food, for us.
We have a little too many dry lentils in the pantry, so I played around with them and came up with a lentil base for ‘meatballs’. Take this base and add your favorite meatball add-ins to it, and enjoy!
It’s simple, hands-off, and easy. We use it a lot, because the leftovers are an asked for lunch – they go great in wraps.
Lentil Ball Base:
Serves four for dinner
1 cup dry lentils (about ½ a pound)
2+ cups water
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp salt
½ tsp black pepper
1 chopped carrot
Put all ingredients in a pot and simmer covered about 30 minutes. Add water during cooking if they threaten to dry out.
this is all it is. Plus water
Strain them when they are done and allow to cool.
Done. You can mush the lentils on the side of the pot with a spoon.
Add
About ½ cup bread crumbs (you want the mix to stick together, so add ins can be gooey)
with bread crumbs mixed in
Whatever flavors you want
Form into balls I get 24-28 golf ball sized ones.
Bake at 350F sprayed with oil for about 30 minutes, turning once.
After they are baked, they can be reheated slowly in a sauce *gently* without falling apart.
That’s it.
Cheap, healthy, vegan, free of most allergens, and infinitely adaptable.
We have many vegan dishes in our recipe box, because vegan to us is simply another way to eat. These are not ‘sacrifice’ meals, but meals that really would not be made better with meat anyway. I like to bring this one to pot lucks, because it’s vegan and grain-free, which sometimes makes it one of the only things a guest can eat. And it’s tasty. An omnivore friend has deemed it ‘sausage and peppers’ and we agree.
And, it’s simple. If you don’t have an instant pot, you can do it on the range or in the oven. If you do it in a slow cooker, start with beans that have been boiled first (not completely cooked through), though.
The first thing to do is soak the beans. My current way to do that is to put dry beans in the Instant Pot for a 4-minute cook, with water, a little salt, and a bay leaf. You can do a ‘quick soak’ with the same add-ins on the range (a 2-minute boil and a 1-hour soak) or do an overnight soak first in plain water. I like the way the bay and salt flavor the beans as a base for pretty much anything.
Navy beans soaking. Any white bean will do.
Then you want to cook a lot of onions (I used 3 large ones) in a lot of olive oil until they are translucent. That is the only cooking that will happen outside of your bean pot. You then toss the onions and everything else into your pot, and let it go until it’s cooked all the way. It’s seriously that simple. Serve it with bread, or over pasta or rice, and it’s a great, tasty, cheap and healthy meal. Leftovers will be done with pasta tomorrow at our house. Yes, you can cut the oil down, but there is no other fat in the meal, and olive oil is healthy. 😉 (Do NOT use ‘high quality’ olive oil for this. This is your cooking oil.)
Onions cooking… mmmmm
1# white beans soaked (As mentioned, a little salt (1/2 tsp) and a bay leaf if you are doing a quick soak adds nice flavor)
3 onions, sliced or chopped 1/2 cup olive oil 1/4 tsp salt Sautee these three until the onions are translucent.
3 large green bell peppers, sliced or chopped 1 hot pepper- optional. Add more or less, and any pepper you like. I add 1 sliced pepperoncini. This is not to make it hot (although you can) this is to add a little flavor. The pepperoncini is not really hot, but adds a bit of brine to the dish. 1 quart crushed tomatoes (standard can) 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced 1 tsp ground cumin 1 tsp dry oregano 1 tsp salt 1/2 tsp pepper 2c water add all of these to the pot and cook until done.
all ingredients except onions and water in IPCooked beans.
