Hearty, savory, garlicky meatballs just like you grew up eating...but totally meatless! These lentil meatballs are packed with flavor, easy to whip up, totally vegetarian, vegan, and optionally gluten-free!
A couple weeks ago my husband's employer held a meatball cook-off. Apparently it was just between two people, both who swore their mom's meatballs were the best on the planet. My husband suggested he could jump in and prove that his wife's vegan meatballs were actually the best on the planet.
While I love the bid of confidence, I'm just not sure I'm ready for that kind of thing. I did consider sending him in with some type of veggie meatballs for anyone who was interested in trying them, or just to make sure any vegans or vegetarians he worked with didn't get left out of the fun.
But I realized I didn't even have super simple meaty Italian meatball, which is what I'm sure the people who entered the meatball battle were going for.
I do have Italian meatballs that taste like eggplant and broccoli rabe. And I also have meaty non-Italian meatballs. In fact, I get comments from you guys all the time telling me you've adapted my salisbury steak meatballs or tofu balls for purposes of drenching in tomato sauce and serving with pasta.
So I decided it was time for some meaty Italian vegan meatballs, and I made them out of lentils!
What's great about this recipe is that it's made almost entirely from pantry staples. Onions and garlic are the only exceptions, but I'm betting most of you guys have them hanging around the kitchen.
I cooked up some dried lentils for my lentil meatballs, but you can use canned if you prefer.
To start, you'll be blending up some oats in the food processor. The oats bind the balls together. I usually go with panko breadcrumbs for this purpose, but the nice thing about oats is that they allow you to keep the balls gluten-free if you like.
After blending the oats, add your lentils, along with some sautéed garlic and onions, tomato paste, and seasonings. Just pulse once or twice — the mixture will quickly turn to total mush if you overdo it.
It should be very soft, but still firm enough to roll into balls. Roll them up!
These lentil balls bake up in the oven for about 25 minutes. Just enough time to cook up some pasta and maybe even whip up a batch of sauce.
Tips for Making Awesome Lentil Meatballs
- If you keep oat flour on hand, feel free to sub 1 scant cup of it for the rolled oats. No need to blend it in advance if you do — just throw it in with everything else!
- Use certified gluten-free oats (or oat flour) and tamari if you'd like to keep these beanballs gluten-free.
- Wet your hands before rolling to prevent the lentil mixture from sticking to them.
- You can prep the lentil mixture a day or two in advance and store it in the refrigerator, or up to two months in advance and freeze it. On the day of serving, just thaw if it's frozen, roll, and bake according to the recipe.
- Be careful not to overcook your lentils or overblend your lentil meatball mixture in the food processor. Doing either could make the mixture too soft to roll! If that does happen, try stirring in a tablespoon or so of flour, or chilling it for a bit to firm it up.
More Vegan Meatball Recipes
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📖 Recipe
Italian-Style Lentil Meatballs
Ingredients
- ¾ cup dried brown lentils (or sub 2 cups precooked or canned)
- 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 3 garlic cloves, divided and minced
- 1 cup rolled oats (optionally gluten-free)
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce or tamari
- 1 ½ teaspoons red wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- 1 teaspoon dried basil
- ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste
- ½ teaspoon liquid smoke (optional)
- ½ teaspoon salt, or to taste
- ½ teaspoon black pepper, or to taste
Instructions
- If using dried lentils, place them into a small saucepan and cover them with water. (If your lentils are canned or precooked, skip to step 5.)
- Place the pan over high heat and bring the water to a boil.
- Allow the lentils to boil, uncovered, for about 20 minutes, until the they're tender but not mushy.
- Remove the pot from the heat and drain the water. Give the lentils a quick rinse in cold water.
- Lightly coat the bottom of a medium skillet with oil and place it over medium heat.
- When the oil is hot, add the onion and sauté for about 5 minutes, until soft and translucent.
- Add 2 cloves of garlic and sauté for about 1 minute more, until very fragrant. Remove the skillet from the heat.
- Preheat the oven to 400° and lightly oil a baking sheet or oven-safe skillet.
- Place the oats into the bowl of a food processor fitted with an s-blade and blend to a powder.
- Add the cooked lentils, cooked onion and garlic, the remaining raw garlic, tomato paste, soy sauce, red wine vinegar, oregano, thyme, basil, red pepper flakes, liquid smoke, salt and pepper to the food processor bowl.
- Pulse just a couple of times — much more and the mixture will quickly turn to mush.
- Taste test the mixture and adjust any seasonings to your liking.
- Roll the mixture into 1-inch balls (about 24 of them), and arrange them on the baking sheet or in the skillet.
- Lightly brush or spray the balls with about 1 tablespoon of olive oil.
- Bake for about 24 minutes, until firm and lightly browned, flipping the balls about halfway through.
- Serve with your favorite sauce and optionally some pasta.
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About to make for a client of mine! If I sub breadcrumbs is it a direct substitution for rolled oats ?or would I need to do some tweeking?
If anything, you might need a bit more breadcrumbs. I would start with a cup, then add more if the mixture seems too loose to roll into balls. Good luck and I hope it's a hit!
I am trying to eat less meat so when I came across this I decided to give it a try. I used canned lentils which I rinsed and drained and even spread out over a towel to further dry them a little. I don't have a food processor but do have a small chopper so ground the oatmeal in that then mixed everything together in a bowl. It seemed to work out well. I made a homemade red sauce I like and put it and the 'meatballs' over quinoa/brown rice pasta. It was a very filling meal. I would try making them again sometime.
Great recipe, comes together beautifully. Adjusted seasonings, a little more salt and little less thyme - due to personal preference - but aside from that followed the recipe and I couldn't be happier. Thanks!
I love these I made them really happy with recipe
Does anyone know if we can put these in sauce after baking to simmer for 10 min or so to pick up the flavor of the sauce? Or will they fall apart?
I think they would fall apart. If you want to keep your meatballs in sauce for a long period I'd recommend using a seitan or wheat gluten based recipe like this one: https://thestingyvegan.com/vegan-meatballs/ They tend to hold together better than beanballs!
Thanks for the recipe! I am baking these as I write and used a couple comments made by others to guide me, so thanks to them, too. I left out the crushed red pepper, and used bread crumbs instead of oats. Actually, I made crumbs from some bagged bread cubes for making stuffing. I substituted about 1/4 C unsalted roasted sunflower seed that I processed into a meal about the size of the bread crumbs for about that amount of the bread. I used Italian seasoning for the other herbs, for convenience. I already had some left over lentils I had cooked in vegetable broth that I used and so I left out the salt, too.
Just took them out of the oven and the flavor is very good. Nice that they are lower in fat than meat!
These are delicious! Started adding more plant-based meals to my diet, and tried a few recipes for lentil meatballs before finding this one that I love. I don’t use the processor. Mash with my pastry cutter instead, and the texture is perfect. I freeze them and heat individual servings with sauce/pasta/veggies of choice. So good!
Excellent! I doubled the spices but everything else remained the same. Great texture and the flavor was delicious. This will be my go to recipe. Thank You
Just had these for lunch. Very, very good recipe. Probably the best. Also on the hunt for lentil recipes.
I have a question. Can I freeze them before baking, or after baking? Makes quite a bit, don’t think I can eat these alone.
I'm glad you like them! You can freeze them before or after baking.
Hi I’ve made this recipe before and I love it! I’ve tried a lot of vegan meatball recipes and this is totally my favorite. I usually add parsley. I’m wondering if anyone has tried doing Quinoa instead of oats .. I think that would be good but maybe it wouldn’t work? Lemme know if anyone has any thoughts please!! I’d love to make these tonight.
Glad you enjoyed it!! I wouldn't recommend using quinoa in this recipe - the oats absorb some moisture and help bind the meatballs together, which quinoa can't do quite as well. Give this one a try if you're interested in incorporating quinoa into some vegan meatballs: https://www.connoisseurusveg.com/quinoa-meatball-sub-grilled-peppers-onions/
II. Super excited to make these. f I add them to a sauce and let them sit for a while before serving them, how long would they last in the sauce before crumbling?
I wouldn't leave them in there too long. I'm guessing 10 or 20 minutes, but I haven't done a lot of testing on that. I hope you enjoy them!
Just made these for dinner and they’re super tasty! I love the combo of the Italian spices plus the red pepper flakes to make it a bit spicy. I had them with quinoa and steamed corn, paired well. Thank you!
Thanks - they were great!!!
Thank you for making this recipe! My partner and I don’t really buy meatballs (or ground meat) in the store, so it’s great to have a lentil-based recipe that we can make on our own. We like to add extra red pepper flakes to increase the heat level. We also really like the taste, it definitely feels like “italian-style” and it goes great with marinara sauce
Wow. I just made these without expecting much and boy was I wrong.
I didn’t have liquid smoke, or fresh onions so I subbed more tomato paste and dried onions instead. I used 1/2 cup of oats and some Italian breadcrumbs I had, and added a flax egg.
I also don’t have a food processor, so I just made them in a bowl, crushing them with my hands. I quickly pan seared them and then threw them in the air fryer.
AMAZING. I will be making these again.
Great recipe. I did some just in the oven and then finished some in the airfryer. Both my boyfriend and I preferred the airfried ones. I did 15 minutes in the oven and like 5 in the airfry I did add some sun-dried tomatoes finely chopped to the mix and it was great.
My husband and stepson are vegetarians and I was excited to find this recipe. They both liked them and agreed that they would be good also as an appetizer with a dip. On the downside, however, it took a long time to make this recipe. I do not have a full-size food processor, and ended up using my mini-processor plus 2 types of blenders to try to properly blend the ingredients. I had to add water several times so that they would mix, then ended up with too much moisture and rolled the meatballs in panko crumbs. Anyway, I will not attempt this recipe again until I have a full-size food processor.
I'm considering making these without processing the lentil mixture. Even with a few pulses, they still become too compact and dense. I may try mashing with a fork. I tried the same technique with a black bean burger recipe and the results were much better after I mashed instead of processed.
Hi Alissa, thank you so much for this awesome recipe, I was wondering could you make and cook them in advance and then freeze the cooked meatballs? I made these for my 10 year old grandson whom has chosen to go vegan and the whole family including me loved them. Will be trying more of your recipes for sure!! Not sure why my tex size is so small. lol
I'm so glad they were a hit! You can definitely make and freeze them - just store them in a sealed container and they should be good for about 3 months. When you're ready you can thaw them out and pop them in the oven (around 400°) for a few minutes to reheat.
I made these last night. They were delicious, but I pulsed them too much and they ended up a little lacking in body! I thought of something, though...If I reserve some whole or slightly mushed lentils, garlic onions and add them back in to the mix after the processing, it might make for a more interesting texture. Didn't stop us from wolfing them down though! Keep up the good work! I read all the new recipes and look forward to trying anything that looks tasty. Been a vegan for a year and half and it's such a shame what passes for food when you go to a restaurant (At least when I used to go!) This is much better, fresher and tastier. Thanks again!
Russ I made these and did exactly like you and over processed them BUT I had some lentils reserved and added them for texture......they were perfect!! I did eat some along the way to taste for seasoning and they were super delicious raw as well
My grandma made these for me and they're soooogood! She was happy that the recipe calls for baking them, bc frying veggie balls is usually a disaster.
These are the simplest and lowest cal lentil balls I've seen online. I've found my winner!
I forgot to leave a rating! 5 stars :)
Awesome! So easy to make them. Thank you!
Sorry, I mean oven baked. Thanks
Hi, can we cook these lentil balls in soup instead of Ben baked? Thankd
I wouldn't recommend it - they'll probably fall apart in the soup.
Its just the 2 of us. So wondering if u can freeze these meatballs?
Yup! They freeze great.
You have yet to steer us wrong. The chipotle tofu sandwiches with the pineapple guac recipe is a staple in our house. These are super good too! Husband: they are definitely better than the fake meat meatballs.
Hi, is there anything I can use that isn't oats or bread of some sort, so for example cauliflower rice?
I think they'd fall apart if you used cauliflower. You'd need to use something that will soak up some of the liquid. Rice or bean flour might work, but I haven't tried either, so I'm not totally sure.
I made these in my air fryer (20 minutes at 400 degrees) and they were really yummy! I enjoyed the savory flavor and they were simple to make. Thanks for sharing!
Wow was this delicious! I used the air fry method, though I found it needed much less time than 20 minutes. Maybe 8 per side, or even 7. The balls held their own after that, and I sat them in my tomato sauce for about ten minutes then transferred them to a glass baking plate to keep warm in the oven and to keep them from falling apart. Thankk you for this recipe, it is truly delicious.
I love these! This is my second time making them, and I have really enjoyed them both times.
This time, I used bread crumbs instead of oats and red lentils for about 1/3 of the total quantity (since I was low on brown). They still turned out great. Both my baking sheets were occupied, so I had to bake them in a nonstick skillet that was pretty small -- they were very snuggled up but didn't stick together at all.
I love how flexible and forgiving this recipe is!