Guess what? You can’t find garbanzo bean recipes made from dried beans easily. Everyone wants to tell you to use canned ones. What’s up with that? Dried beans are cheap and store well and yes, really, they can be tasty (I didn’t believe this myself until recently but it’s true). So here’s my version of a simple, tasty side dish or snack and I include the directions for rinsing and soaking, etc. You can take the soaking / cooking method up to the draining point if you want to use the beans in a canned recipe.
1 cup dried garbanzo beans, sorted and rinsed
oil (canola, coconut, or olive)
tamari or soy sauce to taste
Bragg’s (yes, it’s weird stuff)
garlic (optional), minced
Soak the beans, 3 cups of water for each cup dried beans. They need to soak overnight or eight hours. If you forgot to soak them the night before just do it first thing in the morning. I usually put them in glass and cover it – who wants to come upon your beans with lint or cat hair floating on top? Yuck.
About an hour and a half before you want to eat, drain the beans and rinse again (this will make them NOT farty, unless you’re into that sort of thing. Put beans and 3 cups water in a large stockpot. Bring to a boil then lower to simmer. I usually cover them and do a very gentle simmer so as not to break them up.
The beans will probably be done in an hour to hour and a half – depending on, mostly, how fresh they are. Just taste on after an hour and see how tender they are. You don’t want them to fall apart. They can be a teensy bit tough when you drain them because you’re going to cook them some more in the pan.
About that. Drain the beans when they’re done. Melt your oil / fat in a skillet and cook the beans. The goal here is to get them hot and crusty. The larger the pan is the more likely you can make a crispy / crusty version. Five minutes before done, throw on the garlic; last minute, throw on the tamari and Bragg’s to taste.
Serve immediately, room temperature, or cold.
I know this recipe seems laborous but that’s because I want you to have better beans than my first few ventures. And along those lines, here are some:
General Bean-Cooking Tips!
- When cooking beans don’t add salt, fat, or vinegar until the beans are mostly tender. If you add salt too early, it can keep them tough and no amount of cooking will remedy it.
- Don’t cook beans in a pressure cooker because apparently it may explode? I don’t know how true this is but who wants to take the chance? Jesus, I really don’t understand this bean thing.
- “Quick soak” methods, which involve heating the dried beans and letting them soak, make less tasty beans. And more farty ones.
- Confused? Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of beans soon. My experience is each type really is a different animal, so proceed by trial-and-error.