Vegan Arancini / Fried Rice Balls

Here’s how you can easily make vegan arancini, also known as vegan fried rice balls or fried risotto balls. It’s the perfect recipe to make with leftover rice! Give it a try! 

Arancini is delicious Italian appetizer recipe, originating from the Sicilian region. Arancini are simply stuffed rice balls coated with breadcrumbs and then deep-fried. The stuffing varies, from meat (usually a ragù filling, similar to the one used for the Bolognese pasta), mozzarella or even peas.

I recommend this cookbook!

Arancini can be shaped spherical or cone-shaped, depending on the region they are made. The name means “little orange” and depicts perfectly how these rice balls look once fried.

This is not exactly a healthy recipe, as there is a lot of frying involved. There’s no way you can get the crispy texture without deep-frying, so when I decided to re-create this recipe I knew that baking wasn’t an option.

Veganizing this recipe was a breeze. I replaced the eggs with some psyllium husks mixed with water. After a couple of minutes, they turn into a gel-like consistency similar to that of egg whites. The filling was made with vegan cheese. Use a brand of vegan cheese that melts or make my vegan mozzarella recipe!

These vegan fried risotto balls are very easy to make. You can try this delicious appetizer/snack whenever you have some leftover rice and don’t know what to do with it.

Hope you’ll like this vegan fried balls recipe. Give it a try and send me your feedback below! 🙂

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Yield: 4 -6

Vegan Arancini / Fried Rice Balls

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Here's how you can easily make vegan arancini, also known as vegan fried rice balls or fried risotto balls. It's the perfect recipe to make with leftover rice! Give it a try!

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 50 minutes

Ingredients

• 400g (2 cups) leftover cooked risotto
• 130g (1 cup) vegan cheese, cubed - a brand that melts
• 40g (⅓ cup) flour
• 100g (1 cup) Panko breadcrumbs
• 2 Tbsps psyllium husks
• 2 Tbsp nutritional yeast flakes
• oil, for frying
• 225g (1 cup) marinara sauce, for dipping
• 2 Tbsp parsley chopped, for topping

Instructions

1. Heat some oil (about 2 cups) in a large frying pan, over medium heat.
2. Line a baking tray with parchment paper and set it aside.
3. Wet your hands, then take a scoop of rice, and flatten it out in your hand.
4. Take a cube of vegan cheese and put in the center of the rice.
5. Form the rice around the cheese cube, into a ball.
6. Mix the psyllium husks with 6 tablespoons of water. Set it aside in a bowl.
7. In another bowl, add the flour.
8. In the third bowl, add the Panko breadcrumbs mixed with nutritional yeast.
9. Gently roll the rice ball into the flour, then roll into the psyllium and water mix (which is almost the consistency of egg whites), and then into the breadcrumbs mixture.
10. Spread them out on the parchment paper-lined baking sheet.
11. Now the frying part. The preheated oil should be at 170°C.
12. Dip each ball into the oil and let it fry until golden and crispy, turn them slightly while they are frying to make sure they are cooking evenly.
13. Set them aside on a plate covered with paper towels, to absorb the excess oil.
14. Serve these vegan arancini with marinara sauce and chopped parsley.

Nutrition Information

Yield

4
Amount Per Serving Calories 464Total Fat 12.4gCarbohydrates 77gProtein 11g

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