Chickpea 'Meatballs'

I know I will be making this recipe again and again! I tried it today for the first time, and we loved it.

I swapped the flaxseed with chia seeds- and it worked well; and I used fresh parsley instead of dried herbs.
We ate the “meat”balls with yogurt, more parsley and freshly squeezed lemon juice. Yum!

PUL Team - Feb. 14, 2026, 10 p.m.

Yayy so happy to hear this, Giulia! Thanks for sharing your experience with the recipe ☺️

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Delicious! My daughter and I made these and we both loved them!

The flavor of these were nice. My batter came out pretty wet, so I added some more breadcrumbs. After cooking them, the insides were still quite squishy. Any tips on how to make them more firm and dry?

PUL Team - Sept. 20, 2025, 4:16 a.m.

Heyy Briana, you could try a couple of things to help them firm up: make sure to fully drain and dry any excess moisture from the chickpeas before blending, add a bit more breadcrumbs (or even some oat flour) to absorb extra wetness, and avoid crowding the balls in the baking dish so they bake rather than steam. Also, letting them rest for a few minutes after baking can help them set ☺️ hope this helps for now!

Briana Hemry - Sept. 20, 2025, 7:18 p.m.

I did not dry the chickpeas before adding to the food processor. I will try that next time. Thanks for the tips!

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I made these several times and it is my favourite vegan meatball recipe! I’d like to make a big batch and freeze them so I can have it ready when I need a quick dinner. Should I freeze them before or after baking?

PUL Team - Sept. 2, 2025, 8:29 p.m.

Heyy Niki! So glad you love them 🙌 You can freeze the meatballs either before or after baking, both work. If freezing unbaked, simply thaw and bake as directed. If freezing baked, reheat directly from frozen in the oven until warmed through. Hope this helps for now!

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Most tender and delicious meatless meatballs I’ve ever made!

The best

I’ve made them today as prep for the week. I tried one and felt it a bit dry. Will definitely try with marinara! It’s definitely tasty!

Will hand mix first next time as used a blender as adapted as don't have a food processor. Also skipped the oil. Very nice flavor and texture and added on top to your vegan Mac n cheese. Very good! Will freeze the leftovers to use as a protein to add to salads. Easy to make! Thank you!

PUL Team - July 1, 2024, 5:19 p.m.

Yay so thrilled that the "meatballs" were enjoyed and love the idea of enjoying them on mac and cheese. Happy cooking, Tina 🤗

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Nothing to say, amazing. I’ll make them again and freeze them. I hope they’ll stay fresh after the freezing process ☺️

The greatest veggie meatballs recipe I've ever had or tried in my life ! For real 👌🏼 It's tender, not dry at all. Super fast and easy to make ! You can fry them, cooked them in a pan, or in the oven. I like to make a lot of them, then freeze them so that I have some whenever I want to, without having to buy expensive, unhealthy and bad quality veggie meatballs from the supermarket.
Thank u some much for this recipe 🤩

PUL Team - March 19, 2024, 10:19 p.m.

What a big compliment, Déborah, we're thrilled that the "meatballs" are being enjoyed ☺️

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Why wouldn’t this be called Falafels? Am I missing something

PUL Team - March 18, 2024, 11:57 p.m.

Hey there, Anch! These chickpea balls may resemble falafels, but we find their texture and flavour better aligns with "meatballs". For example, combining quinoa and chickpeas in this recipe is more firm than just chickpeas in falafels, and the nutritional yeast offers a creamy flavour not commonly found in falafels. We hope this helps for now, and happy cooking 😃

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These are perfect. So tasty, moist in the middle and crunchy on the outside. And so easy to make. Thank you! ♥️

I’ve made this recipe several times and have been refining the process and ingredients each time to work toward a firmer end result. The original recipe I found to be a little too soft.

Here are my hacks:
I substituted fresh basil for dried and added Italian parsley for a fresher taste. Also hand chopped the remaining chickpeas to control the texture a bit more. Finally, I also included Lions Mane Mushroom Crumble from Big Mountain Foods and substituted Just Egg liquid for the flax egg to strengthen the binder (may also need to add more breadcrumbs if mixture is too wet). A cookie dough scoop helps ensure consistency size and cook time.

When cooking, I increased baking time an addition 3 minutes at a time until they were firm enough to the touch (will vary depending on moistness of the starting mixture)

For serving, I covered in tomato sauce and briefly reheated in the microwave versus trying to heat them in the pot of sauce. I tried heating in the sauce pot and thought it made the balls too soft.

End result was an authentic tasting Italian meatball with a very firm consistency. Enjoy!!

PUL Team - Feb. 19, 2024, 7:30 a.m.

Thanks a bunch for taking the time to share your experience with the recipe, Joe - it's so appreciated 🤗

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Delicious

Amazing, whole family loved! Swapped out sundried tom's for tomatoe paste, oil and paprika. Really yummy.

I made these tonight and they were delicious! I used panko breadcrumbs, omitted the sun dried tomatoes for just oil, and after baking for 30 min I added them to the air fryer for an extra crunch! My picky children loved them! Thanks Nadia & team.

Aubreytyy - Dec. 8, 2023, 1:04 a.m.

Oops, *Sadia ♥️

PUL Team - Dec. 9, 2023, 2:57 a.m.

Whoop whoop! We're so thrilled the recipe was enjoyed, Aubrey, thanks fro sharing your experience with using the air fryer too 😊

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Hello PUL team !
Quick question : as I live alone, I always have leftover chickpeas when I open a can for recipes like this one.
Can I freeze the remaining chickpeas to use them later? If so, with or without the water?

Thank you for your answer and for the amazing work on the app! 😊

PUL Team - Dec. 8, 2023, 7:34 p.m.

Hey there, Laura, thanks for the question! Yes, you can freeze leftover chickpeas for later use. We find it works best to drain and rinse them, then freeze them in an airtight container. Not including the liquid helps prevent freezer burn to keep a better texture upon thawing.

In case you're interested in using chickpeas or the liquid (called aquafaba) rather than freezing them directly, we also have "chickpea" as an option under our "include ingredients" recipe filter. This filter can be combined with the "freezer-friendly" feature to show lots of recipe ideas 🤗

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Question! Step 2 seems to say you add everything together but then in step 3 after blending smooth it says to add in remaining chickpeas. So am I actually to leave them out of step 2?

PUL Team - Oct. 23, 2023, 12:03 a.m.

Hey Emily, thanks for your patience and apologies for any confusion. In step 2, we're referring to the remaining ingredients under the "chickpea balls" section of the ingredient list. So to make 24 balls, we first added ¾ cup (123 g) of cooked chickpeas and blended until smooth. Once the mixture was smooth, we added another ¾ cup (123 g) of cooked chickpeas to provide the meatballs with some texture. If you click on "Make" at the bottom of the instructions, the cook-along mode offers step-by-step instructions with ingredient amounts and images to help. Do let us know if there's anything else we can help with though 🤗

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Hey,

I want to try this meatballs and I was wondering if it works good als meatball sauce with pasta 😊 or maybe a pasta meatball bake? What do you think?

PUL Team - Oct. 20, 2023, 6:37 p.m.

Hey Monique, these meatballs work wonderfully with pasta and sauce, we'd recommend adding them right at the end as you're about to serve them! We haven't tried a pasta meatball bake but imagine it would also work well too, though the meatballs could soak up liquid and become a bit more soft. We hope you enjoy them if you give them a try 😊

Monique - Oct. 21, 2023, 8:12 p.m.

Hey,

I made the meatballs yesterday and we had a meatball with tomato vegetable sauce for dinner.

Tonight we had a bowl with the leftover quinoa (I cooked way too much, didn’t know how to get the exact amount of cooked quinoa)
Leftover meatballs, some fresh carrots and red cabbage und salad. As a dip I had some hummus.
We loved it. This meatballs are so versitile.

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Tasted great, crunchy outside. I didn’t have sun dried tomatoes so added in some smoked paprika for some extra flavour. Was delicious!

PUL Team - Sept. 21, 2023, 1:35 a.m.

Thanks for taking the time to share your experience with the recipe, J!

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Great vegan meatball recipe! My food processor struggled a bit so I added some water but it didn’t ruin the final outcome. The balls were crispy on the outside and still moist in the inside, which I really liked!

PUL Team - Sept. 13, 2023, 8:06 p.m.

We're so happy the "meatballs" were enjoyed! Thank you, Alice 😊

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Wow, these taste fantastic!

I had to add more breadcrumbs before rolling, but it was an easy alteration. Thanks for these wonderful new ( to me) recipes!

I think I followed the recipe pretty faithfully but the mixture was a little too wet. Next time I will add less water with the flax and add more breadcrumbs.

The flavor is delicious and I’ll definitely make it again!!

PUL Team - Aug. 7, 2023, 9:47 a.m.

Thanks so much for sharing your experience, Madison, and you did the right thing: if the mixture is too wet, simply add some more breadcrumbs until it adheres better. It could be that your quinoa was a bit wetter than ours, and that's okay. Adding more breadcrumbs (or even more flax) should help. So glad the flavour was enjoyed :D

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I loved these, although I had some problems with my mini Magimix foodprocessor, which couldn’t really handle chopping/blending this. It took me ages, which made the consistency not quite as described. The balls were very soft, but the flavour was wonderful! I’m going to make these again with the proper equipment!

PUL Team - July 18, 2023, 2:53 a.m.

Hey there, Car, thanks for taking the time to share your experience with the recipe 🤗
If you give the recipe another try, also be sure to leave some space between the "meatballs". Crowding them too closely can cause them to steam and become overly soft.

Giulia - Feb. 14, 2026, 8:45 p.m.

I don’t know if this could be helpful, but my food processor was not big enough for all the ingredients, so I didn’t blend the quinoa, breadcrumbs and nutritional yeast, and I incorporated them later with a spoon. Maybe this helps to avoid over-blending and the soft/wet consistency!

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These were a hit! So flavorful and versatile. Even my 18 month old loved them! I did omit the sun dried tomatoes but added 1 T of a neutral oil instead.

PUL Team - June 29, 2023, 9:01 a.m.

Wooop woop! Thank you, Tiana 😃

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Great texture and taste! I've made 'meatlessballs' countless times before but it had never occured to me to use quinoa in them - it's so good though! (Especially as it has no quinoa taste, which I'm normally not super keen on.) Kudos :)

PUL Team - June 14, 2023, 10:57 p.m.

So happy to hear, Firebolt, thank you 🤗

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Made these today and they were so easy + delicious! Such a hit on top of pasta, and I can tell that they would be great in a sub sandwich also.

The only thing I’d recommend for the instructions in the “make recipe” setting is for the food processor step with the ingredients list - it would be great if it could say 3/4 cups of chickpeas instead of the full 1 1/2 cups because I got confused and blended them all in together to be honest, thinking there would be that amount more to put in. Minor thing but I think it would make things more streamlined. Another great PUL recipe! 🙏✨

PUL Team - May 31, 2023, 5:23 p.m.

Hey Jamie, I'm so glad to hear you enjoyed the recipe - yay! And that's great feedback about splitting up the ingredient, we've just updated the recipe to reflect this. Thanks for helping us improve what we do 🤗

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Is there a substitute for flax seeds? I am unable to eat them.

PUL Team - Feb. 26, 2023, 3:19 a.m.

Hey CoriK, yes! The ground flax seeds in water make a gel that acts like glue, which helps the balls stick together. You could substitute the ground flax seeds for another ground seed, such as chia seeds which tend to work well.

Alternatively, you could experiment with some other ingredients that act as a binder, such as mashed banana or a commercial egg replacer. These may impact the patty as they're generally sweeter in taste though. We hope you enjoy the recipe if you're able to give it a try 😃

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