Easy Mediterranean Lentil Meatballs
https://ohmyveggies.com/recipe-thai-red-curry-soup/
It’s Soup Week on Oh My Veggies!
Now, before you get all impressed, you should know that the reason this week is Soup Week is because I’ve spent the past two weeks sick and I haven’t wanted to eat much other than soup. So this is less about me being an amazing, creative food blogger and more about me being having a raging cold. But anyway, Soup Week! Yay!
My favorite local Thai restaurant serves the most delicious Thai Red Curry Soup with their lunch specials. Like most lunch special soups, there’s not much to it–broth and usually 4-5 cubes of tofu, about the same number of sliced mushrooms, and a scant teaspoon of thinly sliced scallions. But that’s okay, because the best part is the broth anyway. It’s a little bit spicy, a tiny bit sweet, and incredibly fragrant from the combination of coconut milk and red curry paste.
I’ve made a soup similar to this with summer veggies and green curry paste in the past, and I thought I could switch out the green curry with red and I’d get something pretty close to the Thai restaurant Red Curry Soup. It was really close, but the missing piece of the puzzle was a little bit of brown sugar. If you choose not to use the brown sugar, this recipe is still good, don’t get me wrong! But the sugar adds just a touch of sweetness that mimics the red curry broth in restaurant soups.
After going through all the work of making this, I realized that, other than the red curry, this is pretty similar to the Coconut Lime Tofu Soup I posted last year. (And I even mentioned the Thai restaurant in that post too.) I blame this on the fact that after staying up three nights in a row with coughing fits, I was operating in a sleep-deprived state. A sleep-deprived state that culminated in me sitting in the dark watching Ice Loves Coco with Miso while waiting for my husband to bring me a Blizzard for dinner. (What?! Miso loves Ice Loves Coco!)
Oh, and that magical touch of brown sugar that I was so proud of coming up with? Yeah, that was from the other recipe too.
But let’s not dwell on that. Let’s dwell instead on the awesomeness that is Thai Red Curry Soup.
A sweet, slightly spicy Thai-inspired soup made with mushrooms and cubed tofu.
You can use just about any vegetables in this soup–sweet potatoes, winter or summer squash, green beans, etc. Whatever is in season! Just adjust the cooking time accordingly. Winter squash and potatoes take a longer time to cook, while greens need less time. Rice noodles are a great addition to this soup too.
Don’t you just love it when a recipe is as simple as ‘mix + bake’? No pre-cooking, no unnecessary extra steps – just mix together all of the ingredients, and pop it in the oven. And that’s just the case for these vegetarian lentil meatballs (lentil balls? vegeballs? meatlessballs?). They couldn’t be easier.
Other easy ‘mix and bake’ recipes → easy nut roast; baked fajita rice; Boursin pasta.
I served my lentil balls with spaghetti and tomato sauce – spaghetti and meatballs is such a classic that’s hard to improve on. If you prefer, you could equally serve these vegetarian meatballs with couscous and tzatziki, stuffed into pitta bread, or even just eaten straight from the oven (no judgment here). They’re packed with Mediterranean-inspired flavours, and they’re super versatile.
The basic recipe for these lentil meatballs is canned lentils + flour + egg (the same base I used for my cheesy lentil burgers). Once you’ve got that far, you can jazz things up however you like. I added:
If you like, you could easily switch things up to bring a different flavour profile to your meatballs – maybe you could make a Tex-Mex version, or use some Indian spices, for example.
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Here’s what you’ll need to make these vegetarian meatballs. See the printable recipe card below for detailed ingredient quantities.
You could certainly mix together the ingredients in advance, and then store the mixture in a sealed container in the fridge for a day or so, until you’re ready to shape and bake the balls. The meatballs are tastiest when freshly baked, but if needed, you could even bake them in advance, and then reheat when you’re ready to eat them.
I didn’t experiment with freezing these balls, but it’s the sort of recipe I have had luck with freezing in the past, so I definitely think it’s worth a try.
The easiest way to reheat these lentil meatballs is in the microwave. They do dry out a little and lose their crispiness when reheated, but they’re still tasty. Alternatively, you could re-crisp them in the oven or air fryer.
I served my meatballs with spaghetti and tomato sauce, which worked beautifully. You could alternatively serve them stuffed into pitta bread with some tzatziki, or alongside some mashed potato.
The post Easy Mediterranean Lentil Meatballs appeared first on Easy Cheesy Vegetarian.
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