Quick! A Recipe Switch-up: The Falafel Debacle or Flour Fail

Last night's attempt at making felafel was a fail. Honestly, I really don't know what went wrong.

I used to make falafel after right after college, when I briefly had a place with some old friends. Sometimes the mixture would be runnier than other times, but never have I had the mixture completely dissolve into the oil, like last night.

I roughly followed the recipe I had scratched out. I say roughly because I had forgotten to write down some units of measure (i.e. 1/3 cilantro...c'mon Past Becky, 1/3 of what?), so I just kind of guessed at what I meant.

The mixture had a pretty great consistency, so I was pretty encouraged. I'm fairly sure this is what I remembered from the last time I used this recipe, 4 years ago.

So, I had the oil all heated up. I grabbed my tablespoon, a bit of the mixture, and started adding it to the oil. I got about 6 falafel balls in when I realized....they are browning, they're melting! All of the falafel mixture I had just put in was dissolving into the oil.

The oil with all of the disintegrated felafel

I'm still kind of baffled as to what happened. I heated the oil to 350F...all I can think is that I didn't have the right consistency and it needed more flour to bind it all.

The goopy, oily mess

So, instead of trying to cook them up  in the oil, I just decided to bake the rest of the mixture and make "burgers". These were in the oven at 350 for what felt like forever. It was easily an hour. Honestly, I didn't really time it, I just kept an eye on them.

I brought two of them for lunch the next day, and they went straight in the trash. they were soggy and didn't taste good at all.

I didn't work out so well for me this time. I've been lucky to not have my cooking disasters so far, but they do happen.