There are some phrases and songs from pop culture that are permanently burned into my brain. I can’t look at a tube of Mentos at the drugstore checkout without humming the theme song in my head for the rest of the day. And whenever I have to do something that takes a while, I hear Dory from Finding Nemo chanting, “Just keep swimming.”
It’s a mantra that often works in the kitchen. The key to my very tender and buttery poundcake? Just keep creaming. Want glossy and emulsified pasta? Just keep stirring. How do you transform soaked legumes into a batter that’ll fry up crispy and light? Just keep processing. In fact, where I’ve noticed a lot of novice cooks fall short is patience. Most cooking steps take longer than you think, especially if the culinary action you’re used to seeing is a highly edited 60-second Tik Tok.
Soaked legume* fritters are like magic. If you stick with it and just keep processing, a very crumbly mix of pulsed-up pulses transforms into a sticky batter without any egg, flour, starch—nothing! These kinds of simple soaked legume fritters are found all over the world, from Brazilian acaraje made from black-eyed peas, Egyptian ta’ameya made from dried fava beans, Bangladeshi piyaju made from red lentils, and probably the most well-known, falafel, which likely originated in Egypt but now can be found throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean.
*All beans and lentils are legumes. Lentil is the name for lens-shaped legumes, dal are lentils that have been split, and pulses are any legumes that are harvested for exclusively selling in their dried form.
These are ancient dishes that were made long before food processors or meat grinders, when people would smash and grind soaked legumes by hand. You can do it in a food processor, I promise! In this recipe, I use cannellini beans that are soaked overnight. You can use any legume you’ve got, just think about their size when deciding on soak time. Split lentils only need to soak for an hour, while gigante beans may take a couple of days.
Once soaked, puree the drained beans in a food processor, stopping frequently to scrape the bottom and sides, until the mixture holds together. (A blender can’t handle pureeing a mixture this dry, and you don’t want to add any liquid.) This takes longer than you think—remember what Dory said and just keep processing. Any additions like egg or flour will make the fritter dense and doughy. Once you’ve got your legume dough/batter (smush?), add whatever herbs and mixins you want. You can keep it simple with a few spices, or really load the batter up with chopped herbs, sliced onions, or grated veggies.
Time To Fry
Traditionally, fritters like these are deep-fried, but I rarely deep fry at home. Instead, I go for a shallow fry (½-inch of fat) in a small 6-inch skillet. This allows me to use less fat, but it does take longer since I will need to fry more, smaller batches. (If this sounds awful to you, feel free to fill up a Dutch oven with fat, heat it to 350F, and go deep!)
Because the shallow frying process takes longer, I always stick with a fat that doesn’t readily break down. By “break down,” I mean develop off flavors (canola oil tends to get fishy after just 30 minutes of frying) or lose its crisping capabilities. Have you ever fried in pot vegetable oil, with initially crispy results that end up oily by the last round? It’s not you. It’s your oil.
My favorite frying fats include ghee, refined coconut oil, or lard. Unlike unsaturated seed oils (like canola or soybean), unless you heat these saturated fats above 450F, they will not break down over time. Frying in these fats does initially cost a bit more, but you can strain, top off, and reuse them forever with no degradation in quality or flavor. It’s like magic! The foods you fry in these fats are also extra crispy and never greasy. There can be some flavor transfer, so I recommend one fat for frying savory food (I opt for ghee) and another fat for frying sweet foods (I opt for refined coconut oil).
To prevent the fat from overheating, keep a close eye on the oil’s temperature when you're frying your last batch of anything; it’s often right at the end when the fat can get too hot. When the food is a couple of minutes away from being done, I turn off the heat and let it finish cooking from the residual heat. Then as soon as I’ve removed the last items from the pan, I strain the fat through a fine mesh strainer into a metal bowl to stop the heating and catch any big bits of food. Any smaller crumbs will settle to the bottom as the fat cools. Once cooled but before the fat solidifies, I pour it into a container with a tight-fitting lid, leaving behind the settled crumbs. Cover and refrigerate until you’re ready to fry again.
Olive & Bean Fritters with Dilly Dip
makes about 30 fritters | active time: 45 minutes | total time: at least 24 hours
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Hot Dish with Sohla to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.