How to Cook with Dried Chickpeas

Prepping, soaking, and cooking dried chickpeas - why all the effort? Flavor & cost. In this post, I provide both a stovetop & slow cooker technique for how to cook dried chickpeas. 

You can soak the beans overnight in several cups of water (they expand & you can't use too much water) or use a quick-soak method that I demo in the video. 

For the slow-cooker method, skip to minute 2:40 in the video. 

Quick-soak method: In a large pot, cover the chickpeas with several inches of water & bring to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes, then turn off the heat. Let the chickpeas soak in the hot water for one hour. 

Now they're ready to cook! 

Drain the chickpeas & place back into the large pot. For every cup of soaked chickpeas, use 4 cups of water for cooking. Bring this water to a boil, then reduce to a simmer & cook for 60-90 minutes. 

If you plan to freeze these for future use, stop cooking at 60 minutes. Freezing chickpeas works best when they are a little firm because the freezing & defrosting process continues to break them down. If you plan to use them immediately, cook closer to 90 minutes. 

You can add as much or as little salt as you'd like; try a bay leaf or two, maybe some spices. This is the useful part of cooking dried chickpeas - you get to decide their flavor! 

How to use a slow-cooker method: For every cup of dried chickpeas, add 4 cups of water to your slow cooker. Also add 1 teaspoon of olive oil and half a teaspoon of salt. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. 

Use your chickpeas for something yummy like Chickpea Curry in Coconut Milk, Moroccan Chickpea Stew, or Leblebi (Turkish spicy chickpea soup)

I'm a certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach and I help people eat more vegetables through my cooking companion videos. My goal is to make you feel more comfortable cooking, so I show you not only how a recipe works and looks, but I give techniques and suggestions for making it easy on beginner cooks. 

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