Vegan keftedes 🧆 Greek / Cypriot meatballs
Veganised keftedes: delicious traditional Greek / Cypriot meatballs with red kidney beans and oyster mushrooms instead of animals. Served with fried potatoes, salad and tzatziki
Keftedes: veganised!
When I was growing up, my Greek-Cypriot mum would often make keftedes when guests came around or just as a special meal for the family. In fact, she still does. And now I can make them for her, based on her own recipe (extracted via a long Skype call 😆), except vegan. 🌿
Meatless meatballs
My original plan was to simply swap the pork and beef with some kind of vegetable or bean. How naive I was! This recipe actually took a lot of testing and tweaking. Ironically, I had to deviate from the original recipe quite a bit in order to get close to the same textures, flavours, appearance and consistency.
To give these meatballs a meaty texture I use shredded and diced oyster mushrooms sauteed with paprika and sage. Plus mashed kidney beans for additional texture and flavour. There is no tomato puree in the original recipe, but this helps in mine as a binder and flavour enhancer.
Thankfully a lot of the taste and texture of the original dish is not from the meat but from the other ingredients: tomatoes, grated potatoes, onions, chopped parsley and other herbs.
Adapting the recipe
Traditionally keftedes contain pork and beef, which could be easily swapped with vegan meat replacement products, but I aimed to keep this recipe as universal as possible by avoiding such products.
This way, even when I visit the small town where my parents live, where special vegan products are not that common, I can still make them. It's also cheaper and healthier this way, of course 🙈
Not wanting to rely on specialist, hard-to-find ingredients, I have used garlic, tomatoes, mushrooms and soy sauce to give these meatballs their meaty umami flavour.
I’ve also adapted the technique a bit. Traditionally one uses fresh tomatoes that are first peeled. To save time I used chopped tomatoes from a can. I don’t think it detracts from the result. Likewise, the onions are not usually sauteed before being added, but I find this improves the flavour and texture for this adapted recipe.
Clear your schedule
This is a celebratory dish, party food. Not your typical weeknight fare. Put aside at least two to three hours so that you can enjoy the process. Or should I say ‘processes’: finely chopping the onions and parsley, grating the potatoes, sautéing the mushrooms and onions, mixing everything with your hands, shaping the balls, frying. And you’re going to want some kind of side salad to go with it, at least. Preferably some fried potatoes and tzatziki, too.
Don’t let this intimidate you, though: it’s an enjoyable and meditative process and the results are totally worth it. Especially if you have a Greek or Greek-Cypriot family member, partner or friend who will appreciate the nostalgia factor.
Recipe: Vegan keftedes 🧆 Greek / Cypriot meatballs
This is a meditative and enjoyable process, but it does take time. Clear your schedule and enjoy it!
All measurements are level, using standardised measuring spoons and cups. Be precise!
This recipe makes a lot. Enough for 6 to 8 people. If you’re not hosting dinner or a party, you could halve the recipe, but personally I just like to make a big batch and keep half in the fridge for another day!
Requirements
A large and a medium-sized frying pan.
Large mixing bowl or casserole dish
Grater with small holes option
Masher
Ingredients
1 large onion, finely diced
400 g oyster mushrooms
1 bunch (100g) fresh, flat-leaf parsley,
thickest stalks discarded500 g floury potatoes, rinsed
1 can of red kidney beans, drained
1 can of chopped tomatoes, not drained
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried mint
1 tsp dried sage
2 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp (70g) tomato puree,
AKA tomato concentrate1 cup breadcrumbs
1 tsp fine salt
black pepper, to taste
6 tbsp olive oil, for sautéing
vegetable oil for frying
Instructions
Start prepping: finely dice the onion and set aside. Shred the oyster mushrooms with a fork and then dice the shreds (we don’t want long, stringy threads in the meatballs) and set aside. Chop the parsley very finely. Finely grate the potatoes (no need to peel them) and squeeze out as much water as possible (discard the liquid).
Sauté the mushrooms and onions in separate pans on a medium heat, stirring regularly: use a large pan with 4 tbsp olive oil for the mushrooms, a medium-sized pan with 2 tbsp olive oil for the onions. When the mushrooms start releasing their moisture, add the 1 tsp paprika and 1 tsp dried sage.
When the onions go translucent, add the 3 minced cloves of garlic. When the onions start to become lightly golden brown, remove them from the heat.
Then add 2 tbsp soy sauce to the mushrooms and cook a little longer until the soy sauce is incorporated, then remove them from the heat, too.In a large mixing bowl, mash the red kidney beans, just enough that there are no whole, in-tact beans left … we want some texture, not a smooth paste.
Then add all the prepared ingredients from above and all the remaining ingredients. Mix well with your clean hands. You should now be able to form balls that hold together and are not too dry (crumbly) or too wet. If, for whatever reason, the mixture is too loose and wet, you can add more breadcrumbs. But it should be fine if you’ve followed the recipe closely :)
Shape the mixture into ping-pong sized balls and then roll them into an ovular shape in your palm. They should all be the same size so that they fry evenly.
Fill a frying pan with oil (about one third full) and get it hot on a medium-high heat. If you are impatient and heat it on high, you risk burning the bottom of the meatballs before the middle has cooked. Fry the keftedes on both sides until dark reddish-brown. Place them on kitchen paper or a clean kitchen cloth to soak up any excess oil
Serve with tzatziki, Greek salad, fried potatoes.
Tips 💡
The keftede mixture also makes great burgers!
There’s a series of videos of me preparing this recipe on TikTok. This was when I was testing the recipe, so there’s one difference compared to the final recipe: in the video I don’t dice the mushrooms after shredding them. So remember to dice them after, if you are following the videos.
As a kid I enjoyed eating keftedes with ketchup. TBH, I still do 🙈 They’re great eaten cold, too!
