Spicy Bean Balls
Spicy Bean Balls, inspired by Tex-Mex flavours, make an easy and tasty dinner or lunch. So quick to make using your choice of tinned beans, plenty of spices and a few other simple ingredients, the balls take just 20 minutes to bake in the oven.
Which gives you time to whip up some accompaniments. I love the spicy balls in a wrap with zingy, lime-spiked salad, chilli sauce, grated cheese, and cooling yogurt.
Jump to Recipe
SPICY BEAN BALLS
I’ve tried to come up with a better name than Spicy Bean Balls for these great little bites. But I’ve given up. Because what matters is that they are quick, easy, cheap AND tasty!
I’d had in my mind for some time the idea of making an alternative to falafel. I do love both the versions I’ve already posted, Baked Falafel and Pea & Mint Falafel. But, while I aimed for the new ones to also be good in wraps with salads and sauces, I wanted an entirely different flavour profile.
What I came up with was inspired by my Black Bean Chilli which is another simple, economical dish. I almost always serve chilli with the same ‘fixins’. Grated cheese, a fresh salsa that includes tomato, onion and sometimes sweetcorn, something creamy to cut through the heat like yogurt or soured cream, and occasionally avocado too.
Of course, all these are great in wraps too. For a Spicy Bean Ball wrap, I think some greens and a chilli sauce are a must as well.
INGREDIENTS
For speed, I use tinned beans, but feel free to cook your own. You’ll need the equivalent of two standard tins.
Almost any bean will work, and you can choose a mixture if you like. Here I used black beans and borlotti beans. Other good choices include pinto, cannellini, haricot, or kidney beans. I’ve also recently discovered UK grown carlin peas which I think would work too.
The other ingredients are ones you may well already have at home.
- Onion & garlic for flavour
- Oats (rolled or the finer porridge oats) help bind the mixture. You can replace with breadcrumbs if you prefer.
- Spicy chutney, chilli sauce or tomato puree for flavour and as another binder. I highly recommend my Smoky Tomato Chilli Chutney
- Egg as another binding agent. In the recipe card at the end I give suggestions for replacing this if you want to make the Spicy Bean Balls entirely plant-based.
- Coriander I love its flavour with spices. If you don’t, replace with parsley.
The spices I’ve used are pretty much identical as those in my Black Bean Chilli. I recommend you be generous with them.
Ground cumin, with its earthy notes, is one of my favourite spices and I add 2 heaped teaspoonfuls to the mix. Herbs, rather than spices, are often left out of chilli recipes, but dried sage and oregano, in combination with the other ingredients, say ‘Tex-Mex’ to me. Whether that’s right or wrong I don’t know, but always include them.
Smoked paprika does, quite literally, provide exactly what it says on the tin i.e. adds smokiness. Finally, besides salt and black pepper, we have chilli heat. If you want mild, sweet flavour then go for Aleppo pepper flakes. For a fierier taste, hot chilli flakes or powder. For more smoke, how about chipotle?
EASY SPICY BEAN BALLS
I reckon you can put the balls together in about 15 minutes. Making them a great weeknight dinner.
First, break up the beans using a potato masher, a fork or my preference: your hands. Then simply mix in the rest of the ingredients. You could use a food processor, but I like the chunky texture you get from hand mixing.
At this stage I highly recommend that you take a piece of the mixture, shape it into a patty, and fry in a little oil. Have a taste and see if you need any more seasoning. It would be a shame to have less than a super-tasty mix just for want of a little extra cumin, chilli, or salt. When it seems right, roll into balls about the size of a shell-on walnut.
You could fry the balls, but it’s much easier to bake them. To get a crispy outer layer, I dip the edge of each one into olive oil (just a smidgen!) then roll again so they have a light coating.
Then it’s onto a baking tray and into a preheated oven until the Spicy Bean Balls are nicely browned on the outside and completely hot and cooked through in the middle. This should take no more than twenty minutes. To get even colouring, I turn the balls over after ten minutes.
And that’s it. After little more than half an hour in total, you have a tray of beany, spicy morsels you can get pairing with more goodies.
By the way, as they freeze well, it’s worth making the full batch. That way you can have an even quicker dinner or lunch another day. You could also freeze the balls before cooking if you like.
SERVING SPICY BEAN BALLS
Lots of people refer to this type of vegetarian or plant-based ball as a ‘meatball’. But I totally reject that. Not least because any meat-eater looking to replace some of the meat in their diet, for whatever reason, may not get what they were hoping for.
The truth is, a bean ball is never going to have the juicy texture of one made with beef or lamb. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be good. Just accept and enjoy it on its own terms. After all, who complains that the widely loved falafel doesn’t taste like meat?
Which is a rather long-winded way of saying that a few simple accompaniments can turn Spicy Bean Balls into a rather satisfying feast. One thing they benefit from is moisture. For me that comes in the form of creamy yogurt, perhaps enlivened with a squeeze of lime, and a chilli-tomato sauce.
There are a huge number of hot and spicy chilli sauces on the market, but here I’ve used more of my homemade Smoky Tomato-Chilli Chutney.
I like lots of fresh veggies too, so as well as shredded lettuce combined with nutritious kale, I made a zingy fresh salsa. It’s simply chopped tomato, red onion, sweetcorn, coriander leaf and pickled jalapeno chillies dressed with salt, pepper, and lime.
For a lower-carb meal, you could just eat the spicy balls with the salads and sauces. But when I developed the recipe, I knew I wanted it in a wrap. One of my incredibly easy Quick, no-yeast Flatbreads to be exact.
I started with a warm flatbread and sprinkled over the shredded greens plus grated mature cheddar. Then on went the Spicy Bean Balls and some of the tomato and corn fresh salsa.
To finish, I spooned over plenty of chilli sauce and lime-spiked yogurt. As usual, when it came to rolling up, I found I’d been rather greedy in trying to stuff so many goodies in. But, somehow, I managed to get it to my mouth!
I couldn’t be happier with how this recipe turned out. I’d met my own brief of creating a vegetarian or plant-based ball, with good texture plus the flavours of a chilli, that could easily compete with that old favourite falafel.
If you’ve made Spicy Bean Balls, I love to hear what you thought.
Love a comment and don’t forget to rate the recipe.
Spicy Bean Balls
Inspired by Tex-Mex flavours, these easy Spicy Bean Balls take just 20 minutes to bake. Serve in a wrap with veggies, cheese, chilli sauce and yogurt.
Ingredients
- 2 x 400g tins beans e.g. black, kidney, cannellini, haricot, borlotti drained, approx 460-480 g of beans in total
- 100 g rolled or porridge oats or breadcrumbs
- 1 small onion finely chopped
- 2 cloves garlic finely grated or chopped
- 2 rounded tbsp spicy chutney, mild chilli sauce, or tomato puree see Recipe Note #1
- 1 small bunch coriander, leaf and stems finely chopped
- 2 heaped tsp ground cumin
- 1 heaped tsp smoked paprika
- 1 heaped tsp dried oregano
- 1 heaped tsp dried sage
- ½ - 1 tsp hot or mild chilli flakes or chilli powder
- ¼ tsp black pepper
- salt to taste
- 1 egg Optional: see Recipe Note #2
- olive oil for coating
To serve (optional)
- tortilla or flatbread
- salad
- grated cheese
- chilli sauce
- yogurt or soured cream
- pickled chillies
Instructions
-
Preheat your oven to 200 C / 180C Fan / Gas 6.
Line a shallow baking tray with greaseproof baking or lightly oil it.
-
Put the drained beans in a mixing bowl and break up with a potato masher, fork, or your hands.
Add to the bowl the oats, chopped onion, garlic, and coriander, the chutney, chilli sauce or tomato puree, all the spices and dried herbs. Season with the black pepper and ½ tsp salt.
Crack in the egg (or flax egg or alternatives - see Recipe Note #2) and stir everything together well.
Important: take a small amount of the mixture and shape it into a patty. Fry in a little oil and taste: add more seasoning if needed.
-
Take pieces of the mixture and roll into walnut-sized balls. For a crispier exterior roll each in a little olive oil to give a light coating.
Place the balls on the tray and put it into the preheated oven.
Cook for 10 minutes. Turn the balls over and cook for another 8 - 10 minutes or until crisp and brown on the outside and hot all the way through.
-
Serve with tortilla, salad, sauces etc.
Will keep 3-4 days in the fridge or can be frozen. You can also freeze before cooking, after rolling into balls.
Recipe Notes
#1 Spicy chutney: my Smoky Tomato Chilli Chutney is perfect for this recipe.
#2 Egg alternatives: although the recipe hasn't been tested without an egg, it should still work with either a flax 'egg' (mix 1 tbsp of milled flaxseed with 3 tbsp boiling water, leave for 1 minute or until gel like then mix with the rest of the ingredients), or by adding a few more oats and chutney, chilli sauce or tomato puree until you get a mixture that binds together easily.