Vegan and Paleo Meatballs

After watching food blogger Olga Bykina's cooking videos on YouTube I fell in love with one specific recipe and watched it over and over thinking how genius yet simple the recipe was, and why I never thought of it myself. It is called "2-Ingredient Vegan Meatballs" and can be found on her blog "fablunch.com" or YouTube channel "Fablunch." This recipe is phenomenal, because it is high in protein, filling and paleo. When you first bite into one of these balls, it is crispy on the outside and the inside has the consistency of actual meatballs (at least I think.....I haven't eaten meat in a long time).

So I followed her directions and measurements for the most part when making this recipe, but I did make some alterations. These meatballs are made with potatoes and buckwheat, and don't need a binding ingredient like aquafaba or flax "eggs" since cooked buckwheat becomes sticky like rice. This by itself, is partly why this recipe is genius! I can't speak for the majority of people, but I think it is safe to to say that most would like the taste of potatoes and buckwheat combined. In Olga's recipe she added salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder, dry parsley and coriander for flavor. I added the following ingredients listed below:

- 1 can tomato paste

- 1 tbsp (tablespoon) dried basil

- 1 tbsp dried oregano

- 1 tbsp dried rosemary

- 1/2 tbsp black pepper

- 1 tbsp garlic powder

- 1 tbsp onion powder

You could basically add any Italian seasonings, herbs or spices you think that would work well and tomato paste if you want that more authentic meatball approach, like I did. I usually opt out of adding salt to my recipes, because I try to stay on a low sodium diet, so I opted out of salt.

So her meatballs are smaller than mine, and I would suggest you do that instead of the way I made mine. I wanted mine to look like traditional large Italian meatballs you would get at an Italian restaurant, but the issue I found that as I was flipping the balls over in the pan, they started to fall apart...... My suggestion for you is to make some of varying sizes and test them out in the pan to see what happens. Honestly you could shape the mix into sausages too. The possibilities are endless. I think I might shape the mix into sausages and then after they sausages are cooked, cut up the pieces for a pot of gumbo. It could be a paleo gumbo? Anyways, check out her YouTube channel and blog, because I know you will probably end up loving her recipes as much as I do!