With or without soaking, cooking dried chickpeas takes time and love. Here are some suggestions for preparing chickpeas in a perfect way.
With the arrival of winter, what could be better than a hot chickpea soup? This legume, too often neglected by our diet, is instead a valid ally of health: in addition to its anticancer properties, in fact, chickpeas contribute to the proper functioning of the cardio-circulatory system, regulate triglycerides, provide vitamins of the B group, as well as to magnesium, phosphorus and saponins, which keep cholesterol levels low.
Fundamental in the vegan diet, chickpeas acquire a crucial importance even in low-calorie diets, because they promote satiety and significantly improve blood sugar levels.
Although they may seem like a simple food to prepare, cooking chickpeas, on the other hand, requires some special precautions and, above all, some time, because one of the fundamental steps for cooking dried chickpeas is soaking.
How to cook dried chickpeas with soaking
Unlike other legumes, such as lentils, chickpeas always need to be soaked before being cooked. This process serves to rehydrate them and allow them to recover their consistency.
The soaking times of the chickpeas are quite long: to prepare the chickpeas in an optimal way, in fact, you will have to immerse them in water at room temperature for about 24 hours, unless they are very small in size, in which case 12 hours could be enough. In order to make them more digestible, you can add a few bay leaves or Combu seaweed to the chickpea soaking water.
If you don't have much time available, you can use bicarbonate, to add to the water, which will favor the soaking of the chickpeas. However, keep in mind that this substance will act more effectively in hot water, which is why it is always preferable to add it at the end of cooking, with the heat now off, to help soften the legume.
Once the time required for soaking has elapsed, cooking and chickpeas will be simple. Just put them in a pot with plenty of water, add a few leaves, cover with a lid and cook over low heat for at least 1 hour from boiling. At this stage, do not add salt, which only risks making them harder and less edible. You will do it only after cooking.
Cooking chickpeas without soaking
If you have decided to prepare a chickpea soup at the last moment, know that you can rely on the quick soak. Basically, there are 3 ways to make chickpeas quickly.
The first consists in immersing them in boiling water and letting them rest over the flame for at least 3-4 hours, before continuing with cooking the chickpeas. The second involves a first cooking in a pressure cooker for at least 30 minutes, after which you can proceed as usual. The third suggests putting the chickpeas in an oven pan with a finger of water and letting them cook at 160 ° for about an hour, before proceeding to traditional cooking.
Cook the dried chickpeas with the pressure cooker
Cooking dried chickpeas in a pressure cooker will save you some time. The cooking times of chickpeas in the pressure cooker, in fact, go down a lot: in practice, you will have your dried chickpeas ready in just 30/40 minutes.
Again, salt is absolutely banned during cooking.
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