Canned chickpeas - a story of failure

October 2, 2024 7:02 AM

For some reason I can never cook good dishes with chickpeas, fresh or canned - chickpeas are tastier out of the can than after I cook them. And in general I'm a decent cook! Seeking recipes and trouble-shooting within.

I'd usually rather cook with canned chickpeas due to weeknight dinners, and also I personally have not experienced outstanding results cooking from dried.

Basically, whenever I cook chickpea dishes the flavors never seem to come together, and whenever I cook chickpea tomato dishes (like a simple curry) the flavors stay brassy and I am very conscious of the separate ingredients. This has gone on for years - I've been trying to cook with chickpeas off and on for much of my adult life. I also failed at falafel. (Curiously, I make pretty good socca and chickpea flour tofu.)

At friends' houses I've eaten many a chickpea dish which was well-balanced and delicious, which always inspires me to try cooking chickpeas at home and it is an abject failure. This dates back before the widespread availability of the instapot, so I don't think this is the difference between my stovetop cooking and pressure cooking. Also, I have tried to follow recipes.

I'm a competent cook and there are some things I do quite well, including dishes I've learned by following recipes.

What do you do and what recipes do you use to make successful chickpea dishes? I really like chickpeas!

posted by Frowner to Food & Drink (24 answers total)

Do you add baking soda to the chick peas and soak / boil? I find it softens them up a little so they go better with sauces.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 7:25 AM on October 2

This is my favorite canned chickpea recipe: Spicy Sautéed Chickpeas with Beef & Cilantro.
posted by anderjen at 7:28 AM on October 2

How much liquid are you using? Most chickpea dishes I make (which is really just two) require a bit of liquid to stew the chickpeas. At this point my "chana masala" is more or less from memory, but I started with an old Madhur Jaffrey recipe (this was in high school for me, so roughly 20 years ago). I'm sure you could find something of hers floating around online. If you have access to NYTimes cooks, the Alison Roman chickpea coconut stew is indeed tasty (albeit over-hyped).
posted by coffeecat at 7:33 AM on October 2

I'm not sure what you mean by "brassy," but once you used that word I immediately thought of the flavor of canned tomatoes before they've been cooked enough to mellow and mingle with the other flavors of the dish. It's not a word that describes canned chickpea flavor to me. Is it possible that the issue is that the recipes you're using don't cook the sauce enough?

Another question: Are your recipe sources reliable?

One issue I've noticed with recipes using canned ingredients, especially beans, is that a lot of them just aren't very good. It's not that you can't make good meals with these ingredients, it's that a lot of recipes for weeknight dinners prioritize convenience and "good enough", and tbh might not be tested by people who know the difference.

I would be interested to see what happens if you try a friend's recipe that you know you like. It could be that once you see the recipe you might identify a difference with the recipes you're using, and if not, trying it yourself could maybe nail down whether there's some difference in technique, circumstance, brand, etc.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:36 AM on October 2

Alison Roman's Spiced Chickpea Stew has been a big hit whenever I've made it.
posted by bac at 7:48 AM on October 2

+1 to making sure you cook the sauce enough. With a tomato sauce + not-meat (ie not much flavour from the protein) it's really important to brown the onions for flavour, but also to cook the tomatoes down a bit before adding in the liquidy part. You want to cook tomatoes down with the onions/spices etc until they release oil back into the pan.

Are you including the chickpea water? It's trendy to call it aquafaba and use it in meringues. Many recipes say to just tip the whole can in, water and all. I HATE all those recipes. Yucky. Swap the liquid for stock, or just normal un-chick-pea-y water!

Finally - make sure you cook the whole thing enough! Most chickpea recipes say and simmer chickpeas for like 10 mins. They need at least 45, unless you buy the beautiful plump ones in the glass jars.
posted by london explorer girl at 7:49 AM on October 2

I am sure I’ve never cooked a chickpea, but a phenomenon I’ve noticed with many rich-tasting dishes (most recently a bean dish) is that they’re spectacularly better the next day. Are your dishes better after a night in the fridge?

I am watching this thread because your question raises the question of why I don’t use chickpeas—I guess I’m not to old to try a new thing.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 7:51 AM on October 2

If you're using canned chickpeas, be sure to get ones that have been cooked with salt. I prefer the Goya, but unsalted chickpeas are trash. Strain the chickpeas, but don't rinse.

Here's a recipe I make with canned chickpeas often: Chickpeas with tomatoes, spinach and ginger
posted by dis_integration at 7:54 AM on October 2

whenever I cook chickpea tomato dishes (like a simple curry) the flavors stay brassy and I am very conscious of the separate ingredients.

It sounds like you just need to cook for longer. Make sure your onions, garlic, etc are well softened and even a little browned before adding any liquid and then make sure to cook the tomatoes and other sauce ingredients with the chickpeas until the flavours have melded. That might be longer than the recipe indicates, especially if the recipe claims to be a quick easy recipe for weeknights, where the recipe author will often underestimate the time needed to really make the sauce taste good in order to make the recipe more appealing on the page. It is difficult to overcook a tomato-based chickpea stew; you can leave it simmering for hours as the acid in the tomatoes slows cooking of the chickpeas, so they won't get overcooked.

Also, make sure you have enough salt, added with enough cooking time so it gets right into the chickpeas if they aren't already salted, and enough oil to bring together the sauce.

Are you making your falafel from soaked, uncooked chickpeas? If you're using canned chickpeas or that packaged flour, they aren't going to be great. It also takes a lot more herbs than seems reasonable and the fineness of the grind of the soaked chickpeas is quite important (too fine and they are gummy, too coarse and they don't hold together). I use Kenji Lopez-Alt's recipe.

If you're cooking chickpeas from dry, adding a little onion, carrot, garlic and bay leaf into the cooking water helps the flavour a lot. A pinch of baking soda is great if you want very soft chickpeas for hummus, but I don't think it is necessary in general.
posted by ssg at 8:24 AM on October 2

If you're using canned chickpeas, be sure to get ones that have been cooked with salt.

I'm gonna echo this a bit - canned chickpeas (and beans in general) can vary in quality based on brands. The ones I get from Costco are tiny & hard compared to the large substantial & softer ones from Goya as an example. Also chemical additives like calcium chloride, added to maintain firmness by fortifying the pectin, can give you the wrong texture for the dish you're making. To counteract that, cooking them a bit (the time is dependent on the chickpeas/beans so it will be trial and error) in an alkali solution (baking soda for instance) can speed up the breakdown of the pectin and soften the chickpeas/beans. Drain and then proceed with the recipe.

In regards to "curries" and stews, chickpeas benefit from longer cooking times to absorb flavours. If something tastes "brassy" that tells me you're not cooking your tomatoes long enough for the dish.

In regards to falafels, use split fava beans (not whole skinned ones) instead of chickpeas or half chickpeas / half fava beans. I find they lighten the falafels considerably.
posted by Ashwagandha at 8:38 AM on October 2

My family likes them roasted (or toasted?) in the oven.
Just dry them, toss with olive oil and spices and roast on a baking sheet. (Maybe around 400 deg. F.?)
If you cook them longer, they'll be crunchy and suitable to top a salad. If you cook them somewhat less, they'll still be soft enough to eat by themselves.
posted by kidbritish at 8:45 AM on October 2

With chickpeas, I get flavors I think of as "brassy" when I haven't rinsed them really thoroughly. I get better results when I put them in a colander and toss them for several minutes under running water. I'm often a bit lazy with rinsing beans because the liquid in canned black beans is just fine, but with chickpeas it makes a difference.

Also, canned chickpeas are almost always a bit undercooked (at least, they're not as cooked as I'd prefer them to be for chana masala, hummus, etc.) and take a few minutes of extra cooking. (I've heard people tell me you have to cook them with baking soda, but I don't have any personal experience of this.)
posted by Jeanne at 9:03 AM on October 2

If you're up for some experimentation, I say pick a recipe you've made before and thought wasn't quite right, and make it again with a longer cooktime, OR go for a Kenji recipe like this that's likely to be well-written and tested.

I suspect your only real flaw is rushing but it may be because recipes are sometimes a little hand-wavy about stovetop cook timing. Kenji specifically says 30m simmer on this, AFTER everything's been sauteed and stuff, and that feels right to me. I am an ADHD cook so everything I cook simmers for 30-60-90 minutes when I wander off and I don't have this issue.

You may be subconsciously worried that the chickpeas are going to go mushy if you cook them "too long" but honestly I'm not sure that's possible even if you cook them for a day. You have to get in there with some kind of mechanical force to really make them mush up.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:09 AM on October 2

I also came here to say strain them and don’t use the water.
posted by Jon_Evil at 9:11 AM on October 2

Regarding following recipes: In my experience most cook time estimates on web sites are created by people cooking at higher temps using professional level equipment and techniques or just straight up fudging their numbers to make their dinners look like "30 minute meals." This includes recipes from my go to cooks like Nisha at Rainbow Plant Life. I have learned--through trial and error--to go on taste and texture and adjust times and temps based on my stainless steel cookware and electric coil stove situation. I agree with everyone in this thread recommending you try a recipe you've made before but cook it in liquid for longer and lower your heat to compensate if necessary.

Honestly at this point I encounter so many speed vs. quality tradeoffs with online recipes that I end up using techniques that I know develop better flavor (like toasting spices in oil, cooking tomato paste before adding liquid, adding garlic after the onions are almost done softening, etc.) while following the basic ingredient lists in recipes. I often hold off on adding the bulk liquid to chickpea recipes until I've had a chance to swirl them around in my aromatics, toasted spices, and oil for a couple of minutes.
posted by MagnificentVacuum at 9:28 AM on October 2

This recipe for Sticky Sesame Chickpeas is pretty easy to get right (with the exception that you do need to use less soy sauce if you're not using a low-sodium version. If you miss that warning you can still balance it out by adding extra sugar later, but that's probably not the best for health on either side of that equation.) Works well with additional vegetables, or -- especially -- with vegetarian 'chicken' strips,' and I imagine it would work well with real chicken, if that's your preference.
posted by nobody at 9:45 AM on October 2

If you already have an Instapot, try cooking at high pressure setting for 45 minutes. I have been doing that and my results are good. I used to cook for 30 minutes like for other beans like Black and Pinto, but Chickpeas seem to take more time to cook.

For recipes I use comprehensive books like Raghavan Iyer (660 Curries), Madhur Jaffrey (World Vegetarian) and Habeeb Salloum (Classic Vegetarian Cooking from the Middle East and North Africa) as my sources.
posted by indianbadger1 at 9:47 AM on October 2

Thirding the rec for that Alison Roman stew, because of the way she handles the chickpeas: she calls for them to be sautéed and “frizzled” before proceeding with the addition of liquids, then emphasizes that they need to simmer for AT LEAST 30-35 minutes. This seems to be the key for good chickpea texture and recipe integration, for me. Also echoing others who’ve said that brand matters-Goya has the best canned chickpeas among national brands in the US. Trader Joe’s makes an acceptable canned chickpea, but they’re not as good as Goya.
posted by little mouth at 9:56 AM on October 2

I'm a Rancho Gordo bean stan, and often get chick peas from them; and honestly, they're a bean I have trouble with. They tend to need a longer cooking time than I'd expect and I don't know why.

Some tips on cooking from dried which may help, however -

1. The fresher the beans, the better. I know that they're dried and so "fresh" seems like an odd way to say it, but your average supermarket bag of beans may contain beans that are about 5 years old. And the longer your dried bean has been sitting around, the longer it's going to need to cook. The more expensive and bougie the dried bean, though, the more likely it is to be of more recent vintage.

2. A good way to soak the beans is to use a quick-soak method - instead of soaking them in a bowl of water for 8 hours, dump them in a pot, fill the pot with water, and then bring that to a boil and boil the hell out of them for 10 minutes. Then you turn them off and soak for a couple hours. Then drain, rinse, put the beans back in the pot and fill with water again and then cook. (This has an additional benefit - as a Greek playwright I once knew told me, "It gets rid of the farts.")

3. Rancho Gordo's own suggestion for cooking beans takes a similar approach. Whether you soak the beans or not, they suggest putting the beans in a pot, cover that with a couple inches of water, and add some aromatics like a half an onion, some smushed garlic cloves, a celery stalk, etc. Then you bring all that to a boil and boil the hell out of it for 10 minutes "to show the beans who's boss." Then you lower the heat to a simmer and let simmer until done. I've been able to get some beans cooked in under an hour this way.

Chick peas just seem to take longer than other beans, though. I'm not entirely sure why.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:23 AM on October 2

Ask your friends whose beans you have enjoyed what brand they use. Chickpeas definitely vary by manufacturer, more than some other types of canned beans. Where I am, the store brand is actually the best for my purposes, seasoned but not too much, easily rinsed, uniform size and consistent texture. If I’m not using those I have to do a whole lot of tasting and adjustments to get things right.
posted by Mizu at 11:42 AM on October 2

On top of asking your friends what beans they use, can you ask to hang out with them for an afternoon while they actually cook with them? You may notice something different from what you're doing that would never occur to them to mention.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 11:48 AM on October 2

Another plug for Alison Roman stew--it's super rich bc of coconut milk and bright bc of a lot of fresh herbs. Word of warning: the first night I made it, I was so meh about it. It bored me. But as leftovers?! So delicious!!
posted by bookworm4125 at 6:30 PM on October 2

I didn't read all the replies, but one thing I've found critical in cooking chickpeas from dry is salt. It doesn't just make them salty, it brings out that rich chickpea flavor. I don't know what the threshold is though. You have to add it pretty early in the process, you can't just salt them at the end and get the same result. It seems to be more critical for chickpeas than for other kinds of beans. I'm on a low-sodium diet, but if I'm making chickpeas I'll use my daily allotment on them.

I've also noticed that my chickpeas have more flavor when they're really fully cooked. Even slightly undercooked ones have less flavor. I've overcooked a lot of chickpeas trying to hit that Goldilocks zone. Overcooked ones are great for hummus.

Try different brands too. I've found a lot of variation in flavor even between bags from the same brand, so getting really good-tasting ones can be hit or miss.

Bonus hummus tip: don't add olive oil! There's enough oil in the tahini. If you want olive oil flavor, drizzle some on top when serving. Adding it to the hummus itself masks the other flavors and makes them less intense. Several times I've gotten the flavor dialed in, then added some olive oil for texture and suddenly it's like "Where'd my flavor go?!?"
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 5:17 AM on October 3

Oh, I forgot to say - I've never gotten really delicious chickpeas from the pressure cooker. I use it only when I've forgotten to soak some, or need an unattended process. Stovetop and sort of slow yields the best flavor results in my experience.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 5:19 AM on October 3