Meal prep friendly chickpea salad
Meal prep friendly chickpea salad
A tasty and protein rich chickpea salad that can be enjoyed all week long.
Requirements
Special equipment
- A salad spinner can be used to achieve better results. If you do not have a salad spinner instead use a colander and make sure to strain well.
- Spice grinder or mortar and pestle.
Ingridients
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Chickpeas (dry) | 500g |
| Coriander | 1 tbsp |
| Cumin | 3 tbsp |
| Green cardamon pods | 5 |
| Clove | 1 |
| Piment | 3 |
| Tomatoes | 500g |
| Cucumber | 1 large one |
| Red onions | 3 |
| Olive oil | 6 tbsp |
| Honey | 2 tbsp |
| Lemon juice | 4 tbsp |
| Salt | to taste |
| Pepper | to taste |
| *Habanero or milder chilies | to taste |
| *Feta | 200g |
*items are optional
Recipe
- Water the dryed chickpeas for 12 - 24 h. They will increse in size so make sure to have them in a container that is only half full at the beginning.
- Cook chickpeas for 1h 30min. Strain them and let them cool down for at least 1 hour in the open so they can get rid of as much steam/moisture as possible.
- Cube the cucumber and tomatoes. Mix them in a bowl with a teaspoon of salt. After leaving them for an hour strain them well using a salad spinner or colander.
- Grind the coriander, cumin, green cardamon (you can discard the husk), clove and piment into a powder.
- Cube the onions.
- Roast the chickpeas in a large pan (see note 3.) until they are crispy, make sure not to develop any black spots as this can ruin the taste. Stay with them during the whole process and stir them every 30s.
- Add the ground up spices to the pan and continue roasting for another 5 minutes while continously stirring. Empty the content of the hot pan into an heat safe bowl.
- Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil to the pan and add the onions. Fry them until they start turning translucent and their sharp flavour is dulled. Empty them into the bowl with the chickpeas.
- Mix the remaining 4 tablespoons of olive oil with the lemon jiuce and honey into a homegenous sauce.
- Add the strained cucumber and tomatoes to the bowl and mix everything with the sauce. Optionally cube or crumble the feta and add it to the bowl.
- Salt and pepper to taste, optionally add the level of spicyness to the salad that you can enjoy.
- Store in the fridge to eat from during the week.
Notes
- Boiling your own chickpeas, letting them steam off and roasting them results in them being very dry. They therefore will soak up your salad sauce and remaing moisture from the tomatoes and cucumber. This will keep the salad from swimming in its own juices and lets the sauce adhere to it very well. At the same time it improves the overall consistency and adds a nice roasted flavour.
- Salting and straining the tomatoes and cucumber additionally aims to reduce the amount of moisture they will give off when everything is mixed together.
- I recommend roasting the chickpeas in a stainless steel pan as there is no oil necessary to do so when stirring and scraping of the bottom of the pan every 30s. Just make sure to not let the pan get too hot. If you are using a non stick pan you need to use some olive oil to transfer heat from the pan to the chickpeas as it is not recommended to heat up these pans to the same temperature as stainless steel pans and at the same time scrapping chickpeas of the bottom at higher temperatures would result in the non stick coating getting damaged.