IKEA Veggie Balls

I've been meaning to get myself over to Lakeside IKEA for some time now mainly because I need some new shelves but, more importantly, I have been dying to try their new Vegan friendly Veggie Balls! After following all the build up and hype around these balls online I couldn't wait to get myself down there and into their cafe for some lunch. We made a trip over to IKEA on Monday and I didn't even know if they would have them on sale but once we arrived I saw this sign outside the cafe and literally jumped for joy!

You have a choice of whether you want the balls to come with chips, mash or this jambalaya. We opted for the healthy option but the chips were very tempting! I often can't get over how big the IKEA portions are and how little a meal costs there. This whole plate of goodness, including 10 veggie balls, only cost £3.50. My husband always jokes that it would be cheaper to just eat there every day but sadly we don't live close enough!

So onto the balls themselves....I am happy to say that they totally lived up to expectations! They were really tasty, filling and more-ish. When you bite into a ball you can mainly see sweetcorn and pea pieces and they are almost like a falafel consistency but with more of a veggie burger taste to them. The official ingredients are said to include other goodness such chickpeas, carrot and kale. But most importantly they contain absolutely no animal ingredients. 

On their website IKEA promote these veggie balls as being more sustainable with a lower carbon footprint which is great and completely spot on. But come on, lets face it, wasn't it their very own Swedish meatballs that were at the centre of a certain horse meat scandal a little while ago!? Clearly sales of their meat balls have dropped since that event and I have to say I am a little shocked that people would still consider even eating them after that news story. But sure as hell there were people in the queue in front of us with a few plates of these! Yuk! But each to their own. 

I liked the veggie balls so much that I decided to have a look in their food shop to see if they were available to buy and they certainly are! For £3.85 you can buy a 1kg bag of these babies frozen and when we opened the bag it seriously looked like there were about 200 in there. Ok maybe a slight over exaggeration, but you get a lot!

I'm looking forward to including these in some of my lunches and dinners over the coming weeks and i'd like to offer IKEA an imaginary high five for getting these onto their menu and going as far as to get the official Vegan stamp of approval.