How to Choose Chickpeas and How Long to Soak Them?

Good dried chickpeas have evenly sized grains with a bright, pale yellow skin; a bag full of wrinkled, dull or very unevenly sized chickpeas is likely old stock. As for soaking, the standard is 8-12 hours at room temperature — essentially overnight. Chickpeas that are not soaked long enough stay stubborn during cooking and take far longer to soften, so getting the selection and soak right makes the boiling stage much easier and gives a softer, more evenly cooked result. How to Spot Good Quality Dried Chickpeas? Chickpeas with a bright, smooth skin were generally harvested more recently; a dull, faded skin is a sign the batch has been sitting on shelves for a while. If you spot grains with tiny holes or powdery residue, the bag may have had a pest problem, so skip it. The grains in your hand should be roughly the same size; a bag with very mixed sizes cooks unevenly, with some pieces turning mushy while others stay stubbornly firm. How Long Should Chickpeas Be Soaked? The standard method is to cover the chickpeas generously with water and let them sit at room temperature for 8-12 hours; the water level should be at least twice the volume of the chickpeas, since the grains grow to nearly twice their original size as they absorb it. In hot weather, keep the soak shorter or move it to the fridge. If you are short on time, there is a quick-soak trick: add the chickpeas to boiling water, take the pot off the heat, and let them sit covered for about an hour — this comes close to replacing an overnight soak. Does Baking Soda Need to Go in the Soaking Water? A small pinch of baking soda makes the soaking water mildly alkaline, which softens the chickpea skins more easily and shortens cooking time. Too much, though, can break the texture down too far and leave a faint aftertaste, so a small pinch per 1 liter of water is plenty. Chickpeas can just as well be soaked without it; in that case the soaking time simply becomes a bit more critical, since the skin softens more slowly on its own. How Do You Know Chickpeas Have Soaked Enough? A properly soaked chickpea looks moist all the way through when split into two halves, with no hard dry core left in the center. If you break a chickpea into two pieces and the middle is still chalky white and firm, it needs a few more hours. A soaked chickpea should flex slightly when squeezed gently in your palm, not snap apart. At that point the soaking water can be drained, the chickpeas rinsed, and you can move on to boiling. Why Should the Soaking Water Be Thrown Out and Replaced? The soaking water draws out some of the compounds that make chickpeas harder to digest, so once soaking is done that water should always be tipped out and the chickpeas rinsed thoroughly under clean water. Cooking the chickpeas in the same water can leave the dish with a faintly sour edge. For long soaks (anything past 12 hours), swapping the water one time halfway through keeps it from turning stale and lets the chickpeas cook with a cleaner flavor. In hot kitchens, keeping the soaking bowl in the fridge rather than on the counter cuts the risk of the water turning stale. Use a roomy bowl too, since chickpeas grow to nearly twice their original volume as they soak and can overflow a container that is too small.