Comin’ at you with another gluten-free vegan meal-prep recipe!

This recipe was inspired by Brandi Doming, creator of The Vegan 8. She shared her meatless bean balls recipe with me and I ended up making one week’s lunches around them!

Below is Brandi’s recipe for the meatless bean balls, and if you keep scrolling you’ll find my recipe for the zoodles that I paired them with.

Meatless Bean Balls:

PREP: 25 minutes

COOK: 38 minutes

YIELDS: 5 servings

3⁄4 packed cup (120g) finely diced red onion

1 (15-ounce) can low-sodium chickpeas, drained, rinsed, and patted dry, or 1 1⁄2 cups cooked (255g)

4 tablespoons (60g) tomato paste

2 tablespoons (30g) vegan Worcestershire

1 to 2 teaspoons (2 to 5g) mild chili powder

1 teaspoon (3g) smoked paprika

1⁄2 teaspoon (3g) fine salt

1⁄4 teaspoon (1g) ground black pepper

1⁄4 cup (40g) fine cornmeal

1⁄4 cup (40g) brown rice flour

Parchment paper

1. Add the onion and 3 tablespoons (45g) water to a small stainless steel pan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Once the water is gone, cook for 3 more minutes, stirring constantly, to brown the onions a bit. This will give the balls a lot of flavor. Turn the heat down if the onion is browning too quickly.

2. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.

3. Add the cooked onions, chickpeas, tomato paste, and Worcestershire to a food processor, and pulse several times or just until the chickpeas are broken up into smaller pieces and have a rough, chunky texture. Don’t puree this. You will need to scrape the sides after the first pulse. If there are whole chickpeas remaining, then mash them with a fork so no whole chickpeas remain. Set aside.

4. Add the chili powder, paprika, salt, pepper, cornmeal, and rice flour to a large bowl, and whisk well. Add the chickpea mixture to the spice mixture; stir and press the mixture together for several minutes until it is well moistened and comes together. Using your hands, form the mixture into a sticky, cohesive ball. You will need to rotate and knead the mixture several times.

5. Scoop 1 1⁄2 tablespoons of chickpea mixture out, and press together to form a ball. The mixture is too delicate to roll into balls with my palms, but I found placing a ball in one hand while pressing and piecing it together with my fingertips worked well. Just make sure each ball is compact and smooth. This will yield 15 balls. Place them on the prepared pan.

6. Bake at 375°F for 15 minutes, flip over, and bake 15 more minutes. Let cool for 10 to 15 minutes so they can firm up. Store any extra in the fridge.

7. If desired, serve with pasta and sauce. Add the desired amount of sauce to a large stainless steel pan over medium-low heat. Add only the balls you want to eat at that time to the sauce and rotate them carefully for 3 to 4 minutes or until heated through. The balls will soften too much if stored in the sauce overnight.

Nutrition per serving: 158 calories | 2.3g fat | 6.3g protein | 29.8g carbs | 5.8g fiber |

5.4g sugar | 519 mg sodium

Ashley’s Notes:

• I used Trader Joe’s Soyaki Sauce to replace the vegan Worchestire.
• I used Trader Joe’s all-purpose gluten free flour instead of brown rice flour and it seemed to work fine.
• I found that this made closer to four servings for me (I ate 3-4  meatballs per serving), but maybe I made larger meatballs than I was supposed to.
• I only have a tiny food processor, so I used it to mash the chickpeas, then mixed the rest with a fork. If you don’t have a food processor, you should be able to do it all with a fork.

Zoodles:

2 packages Pre-Cut Zucchini Noodles (you can also totally make your own, but for meal-preps I’m all about convenience)

1 package of cherry or grape tomatoes

1-2 cans of artichoke hearts

½ teaspoon dried oregano

½ teaspoon garlic salt

½ teaspoon crushed red pepper

½ teaspoon black pepper

1 can tomato sauce (I used Trader Joe’s Tomato Sauce)

1 bag of pre-cut broccoli

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and cover a sheet pan with aluminum foil.

2. Distribute broccoli even across sheet pan. Drizzle about 1 TBS olive oil over the broccoli and sprinkle salt, pepper, garlic powder, cayenne, and oregano on top. Mix to distribute the oil and spices.

3. Cook for 20 minutes.

4. Make zoodles according to package instructions (the ones I bought were microwavable, but you can also make them in the oven or on the stove). Drain and distribute evenly into 4 tupperware.

5. Cut entire package of tomatoes in halves and distribute evenly into the 4 tupperware.

6. Open artichoke hearts can, drain, and cut roughly into bite-sized pieces (1/2s or 1/3s should be fine). Distribute evenly into the 4 tupperware.

7. When broccoli is done, distribute evenly into the four tupperware.

8. Sprinkle garlic salt, dried oregano, crushed red pepper, pepper, and any other spices you may like atop the four tupperware. You definitely can just sprinkle them instead of measuring, but in case you’re a newbie I figured measurements were nice to have.

For meal prep purposes, I waited to do these last two steps until the morning before I planned on eating them, just to make sure the meatballs and zoodles didn’t get soggy. But if you want to do this all at once you’ll probably be fine.

6. Distribute three tablespoons of tomato sauce into each tupperware, mix so that it coats ingredients evenly.

7. Place 3-4 meatballs in each tupperware.

8. When you’re ready to eat — microwave anywhere from 2-4 minutes (this really depends on the speed of your microwave and your tupperware — err on the lower end to start).

Viola! As I’m sure you can tell from the recipe, the meatballs are the complicated part, the rest are super simple. But even the meatballs were pretty simple and not a lot of cutting was necessary (that’s the part that always seems to take the longest IMO). I’m all for a protein source that doesn’t utilize gluten or other sus ingredients, and these meatballs def did the trick!