Chickpeas or Garbanzo Beans

Chickpeas or garbanzo beans are a staple of the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisine, but they’ve gained popularity worldwide, particularly in the plant-based community. One of the great things about chickpeas is how versatile they are. We can add them to soups, sauces, main dishes… they make delicious hummus, of course, and even the water they’re cooked in or canned with makes a healthy oil replacement for all kinds of recipes.

The best part is that chickpeas are packed with great nutrition for us. They’re a fantastic source of fiber, making them a powerful prebiotic that leads to short-chain fatty acids with anti-inflammatory powers. Other top nutrients include protein, folate, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc. This means that chickpeas are fantastic for our heart and circulation, our brain and nervous system, our bones, our muscles, our immunity, our reproduction, our metabolism, and our children’s early development, among other things.

You can boil your own chickpeas from dry. Just rinse them and soak them overnight, then boil for about 45 minutes. If you use a pressure cooker, you can skip the soaking and cook for 45 minutes, or presoak and cook them for about 20 minutes. You can also buy canned chickpeas, look for no-salt options since canned legumes often have very high sodium levels. If you use chickpea flour for any recipe, make sure you cook this flour, since it’s made out of raw, dried chickpeas, and legumes always need to be cooked before eating them.

Try our personalized nutrition calculator below to see just how much nutrition you and your family can get from eating chickpeas.