5 Budget-Friendly Middle Eastern Inspired Vegan Recipes

Hey everyone, it's Caitlin and welcome to another video. In this video I'm going to show you five Middle Eastern inspired recipes that are also vegan and budget friendly. This recipe series was inspired by my recent trip to Israel where I went on a vegan tour with Vibe Israel. I was able to try some of these recipes during our travels but some of them are just also from other areas of the Middle East as well. When I went I was really really impressed with the cuisine there. I feel like all of the ingredients are really fresh and healthy and even though each recipe doesn't have a lot of ingredients there is so much flavor in it. So I left that trip feeling super super inspired and I wanted to do something to share my version of these recipes with you all just in case you all haven't tried them before either because I know before my trip my only thought of hummus was like store-bought hummus and I never really properly tried falafel either so I'm very excited to share these recipes with you. Now this video is going to be a little bit different than my other budget-friendly videos because in the past I would write how much each recipe costs per serving. However I think that based on where you live the price of these ingredients is going to vary a little bit but I will say all of the pretty standard ingredients in Middle Eastern cuisines are pretty budget-friendly even in the U.S. and the bonus is a lot of the ingredients between recipes are really similar. So even if for example you need to buy a jar of tahini which may be a it has a lot of multiple purposes for it. So with all that being said let's just get on to cooking. First up I'm going to show you guys how to make hummus the real way. This is so much better than anything you'll ever find in a grocery store. So I'm going to cook my chickpeas in a pressure cooker just because it's faster but the first step which I didn't record is to actually soak your chickpeas. You want to use dry chickpeas when you're making hummus and you just put them in some water and you soak them from 12 to 24 hours. You can also cook them on the stovetop. I have directions for that on my blog but you're just going to cover them with water and then we're also going to add in three to five cloves of garlic and this gives a nice roasted garlic flavor to the hummus. And last but not least we're going to add some baking soda and this is going to help the skins of the chickpeas actually peel off easier during the cooking process and you'll see why we need that later. But for now we're just going to cover the instant pot, set it to sealing and then cook it for 16 minutes on high pressure and then afterwards you're just going to release it and your chickpeas will be nice and cooked. And as you can see here I'm scooping a few out. The skins are already starting to pop off so chickpeas have these outer fibrous skin that makes hummus less silky smooth so we're going to be getting rid of those right now. So I just rinsed and drained my chickpeas and peeled all of them and in case you haven't peeled a chickpea before I'm going to show you here. You basically just pinch the outer skin off and these are what the outer skins look like. You can just throw them out in the garbage can. So now we're going to add our peeled chickpeas to a blender along with those garlic cloves that we cooked and before we blend this we're going to mix our lemon juice and salt together and just give that a good stir until the salt dissolves because we're going to be pouring this into the food processor while it is running. So you're going to start to puree the chickpeas together and then slowly pour the lemon and salt mixture into the food processor and then this is going to blend the chickpeas until they become a pretty thick puree. So now that we have our bean puree we're going to add our final two ingredients the first one being tahini. As you can see the tahini that I'm using is very silky and runny and this is really important you definitely want to invest in a good quality tahini if you want good hummus. So again we're going to blend this up and then this time while the machine is running you're going to pour in anywhere between three fourths of a cup to a cup of ice cold water and this helps to emulsify the fat in the hummus and it makes it a lot more fluffy and silky smooth. So after you finish pouring your water in you're actually going to let this run for about three to five minutes just so the hummus becomes super super silky and then afterwards lo and behold you have the dreamiest creamiest silkiest hummus you have probably ever seen in your life. You can make it thicker or thinner based on how much water or tahini you add and that's kind of personal preference too but in order to serve it up you're just going to spoon some onto a plate and then spread it out a little with a spatula and then I topped it with some more of those peeled uncooked chickpeas because we don't need all of them and I also sprinkled a little bit of za'atar on top which is a spice but you can use whatever you like you can top it with olive oil the world is your oyster but this would typically be served with fresh pita bread and hummus itself is definitely a meal guys you gotta try it. Next up I'm going to show you how to make some baba ghanoush which is another typical dip or spread and for this recipe we're going to start out by roasting some eggplants so baba ghanoush is typically grilled however most of us don't have access to a grill so we're just going to be cooking it in the oven then bake those for a little bit until they're soft and tender but then baba ghanoush typically has a smoky flavor so after your eggplant is roasted it should look something like this but we're actually going to put it back in the oven and broil it for a few minutes until the skin is nice and black and this is going to give us that smoky flavor that would typically occur in a grill so now what you're going to do is carefully scoop your eggplant off of the baking tray and put it into a resealable ziploc bag I'm using a reusable one made from silicone but you can use whatever then you're just going to seal it off and let it steam in there for a few minutes and then once the eggplant is steamed you're going to scoop all of the flesh out of the eggplant and then add it into a food processor and you can just discard the skins now the rest of our baba ghanoush is pretty simple we just need to add in some tahini some lemon juice and this isn't traditional but I also added some smoked paprika to enhance that smoky flavor and then traditionally you're also going to add a garlic clove and salt as well so then you're just going to seal that up and blend it together until you have a thick and silky eggplant puree and I like to use this like I would with hummus serve it with bread or you can also serve it with fresh vegetables you can even put it on a sandwich it has a great flavor to it and I love the texture too so if you guys haven't tried baba ghanoush yet this one is really simple and pretty affordable too so I hope you try it out next up I'm going to show you how to make some tabbouleh using quinoa and tabbouleh is typically made with bulgur which is a type of wheat and it's not gluten-free but I wanted to make a gluten-free version to share with you guys so first up we're going to add some lemon juice lemon zest salt and tahini with a little bit of water in a bowl then you're just going to whisk that then we're going to add in some cooked quinoa and give that a stir until the quinoa is well coated in the marinade then we're going to add in our veggies so we have some cucumber red onion tomatoes some parsley and some mint and the key to tabbouleh is to really chop all of your vegetables and herbs finely and also I will say traditional tabbouleh typically has a lot more herbs in this so if you want to double or even triple the amounts that I used in my blog post you totally can next I'm going to show you what may be one of my new absolute favorite salads it's a fattoush salad with a creamy sumac dressing so first we're going to get started on the dressing and this is sumac if you haven't heard of it before it is a dried red berry it is very common in the middle east and it kind of tastes like lemons because it is dried we're first going to mix it in with some hot water just to let the sumac soak and make the flavors a little bit more accessible then once the sumac has soaked you can add that plus the soaking water into a bowl and then our dressing is super super simple we're just also going to add in some more tahini fresh black pepper and some salt and then you're going to start out by whisking this together and the tahini as you can see is going to get kind of thick but you're just going to remediate this by slowly adding in splashes of water I have the full ingredients listed in the blog post but you're just going to add in a splash of water and then continue to whisk this and eventually it will become a creamy silky dressing like consistency now we're going to work on the actual salad ingredients but first off the best part of the salad is it uses pita bread croutons so we're going to chop up a pita bread into bite-sized pieces and typically this is fried but I wanted to keep my salad a little bit healthier so I just decided to bake it in the oven you can also bake it in your air fryer if you have one but you're just going to put the pita bread croutons onto a baking sheet spread them out and then bake them for a few minutes until all the moisture is gone and they become crunchy in the meantime we're going to assemble the veggies for our salad so we're going to add some leafy greens into a bowl along with some cucumber some tomatoes sliced radishes some chickpeas and chickpeas typically aren't traditional in a fattoush salad but I wanted to add them in to make it more of a heartier meal we're also going to add in some sliced green onions some parsley and some mint and then you're just going to pour however much of your dressing over the salad as you would like and then mix it all together until everything is well incorporated so then to serve your salad you're going to put some in a bowl and you're going to top it with those warm and crunchy pita bread croutons and then I also decided to add a touch of pomegranate seeds for an extra crunch and that's it the combination of parsley and mint is honestly I think one of my new favorite flavor combos so try it last but certainly not least I'm going to show you guys how to make some falafel and the key to falafel like hummus is using dried chickpeas but in this case we're just going to soak them overnight and we're not going to cook them they're just going to cook when we bake it in the oven then we're also going to add in some onion and some garlic and then we're going to blend this until the chickpeas are a pretty fine consistency as you can see they're chopped pretty well then we're going to add in some parsley some cilantro some cumin salt a touch of fresh black pepper a little bit of cayenne pepper so now I'm just pushing everything down on the sides and typically you add flour to falafel to help it bind a little but I wanted to keep this gluten-free so I actually used some chickpea flour instead of regular flour and it worked out perfectly and the last but not least I'm adding a little tahini because falafel is normally deep fried and we're not going to be deep frying it so to replace some of that fat I thought a little tahini would help and it definitely did so now we're just going to blend it for a final time until the flour and the tahini are well incorporated throughout the mixture then we're going to remove this from our food processor and transfer it into a bowl and now we're going to roll out our falafels so I would recommend making your falafels about two tablespoons each so I'm just taking my two tablespoon measure out and forming a ball of falafel dough in my hand and the dough should be pretty wet but it should still hold together well as you can see here so you're just going to repeat this with all the dough until you are out of dough and you have a ton of falafels that are just screaming and ready to be cooked and you can cook these in a variety of ways I figured the most common way people would want to do this was in the oven so for that method you're just going to place all of your falafels on a greased or lined baking sheet bake them in the oven for a few minutes and then halfway through you're going to take them out and flip them and this is going to allow both of the sides to become brown and then once they are done they are going to look a little bit something like this now I'd say the con to baking in the oven as you can see the falafel itself only really gets brown on the top and bottom however the inside is still nice and moist and fluffy which is what we want for a falafel so I did test these using a few other methods the first one I sauteed these in a pan with a little bit of oil so I sort of pan-fried them and they worked out pretty well but I will say they took almost as long to cook as baking them in the oven and I don't really know if the extra effort of turning all the falafels to make sure it was evenly browned was really worth it however my absolute favorite way to cook these was in the air fryer I baked them in my air fryer for a few minutes the full instructions will be on my blog and these came out the most brown and perfectly crispy on all sides of the falafel and they were still nice and moist and fluffy on the inside so if you have an air fryer I would definitely recommend air frying your falafel if possible so you can eat falafel on its own as is or you can serve it with a salad or you can make a tahini dip to dip it in either way it's really freaking delicious and I hope you guys try this more authentic version out and there you have it those are my five middle eastern inspired vegan recipes that I wanted to share with you all another thing that I really noticed and loved about all of the food that I tried while I was abroad is that even the natural or like the most culturally uh I can't think of the word but basically the most simple or standard foods in the middle east or at least when I was visiting Israel are all very vegan friendly and I thought that was awesome because I know like if I go to a Cuban restaurant here in Miami it's very hard to find vegan options but in general middle east seemed to be a lot more friendly if you like this video be sure to give it a thumbs up and let me know what style of food you would like me to cook next I've already filmed a budget-friendly vegan recipes for Mexican inspired Italian inspired comfort food and breakfast cuisines so if you have something besides that definitely let me know below because I would love to film it next and if you're new to my channel here be sure to give this video a thumbs up did I already say that well either way you can do that and you can also click the little subscribe button right down there I post two new videos every single week featured around awesome vegan recipes so that's it for now I hope you guys have a great rest of your day whatever time of day it is for you and I will see you in the next video bye