How to Cook and Store Chickpeas

• 1 kg  (2 lb 3 oz) chickpeas
• 1 teaspoon salt - optional

Chickpeas, like any other legume, need to be soaked for two reasons. It makes the beans more digestible and helps the cooking process because they get softened beforehand. Ideally, you soak them overnight but you can speed this process up.

Place the chickpeas in a large pot and cover them with water. Rather use too much than too little water since the chickpeas will double in size. Bring the water to a boil, cook the chickpeas for 2-3 minutes, remove them from the hot stove and let them soak for an hour. 

Drain the Chickpeas and rinse them. Add fresh water and salt them if you want. I add about 1 teaspoon of salt to this amount of chickpeas. You can however also leave the salt out as it is totally optional. Boil them 60-90 minutes until tender. If you want to use them in stews you might want to stop cooking them while they still have some bite left. I tend to boil mine for the nearly full 90 minutes because I use these in hummus or salads and I prefer them very tender. When they are cooked to your liking, drain them in a colander and let the excess water steam away.

Once cooled down to room temperature spread them on baking trays lined with baking parchment or any other trays you have. I use pizza forms since they fit snugly into the stop shelf of my freezer. Feel free to stack the trays on top of each other but make sure the chickpeas on each tray are in one single layer to make sure they don't stick to each other. Freeze them like this for an hour. Once they are frozen you can transfer them into a large zip-lock bag or an airtight container and place them back in the freezer. They will behave nicely and not stick to each other by using this technique. 

So now that you know how to cook and store chickpeas you can easily make your own batch. If you want to use chickpeas the following days or weeks, treat them like you would treat frozen peas or frozen vegetables. Cook them for a few minutes in hot water or let them thaw slowly. 

In case you are not very familiar with chickpeas or don't know how to add them to your diet revisit my blog the next days. I will be adding recipes containing them in the following weeks. It will be recipes ranging from hummus and falafel to stews and light summer salads.