I’ve really enjoyed doing this!
Forever I have bought my beans in a can. I tend to buy organic and they are not cheap, but for convenience they are great. However, I’ve become increasingly worried about BPA (Bisphenol-A) in the lining of cans and it’s really, really hard here in the UK to find cans that don’t use BPA.
So… off to the dried aisle I went. I decided to start with chickpeas.
I popped them in a bowl last night before going to bed, as they have to soak for 12 hours.
This morning I came down and they looked like this:
All puffed up and lovely looking!!
Next I rinsed them in batches, and picked out a few dodgy looking ones.
I put them in a BIG pan, filled it with cold water and brought it straight up to the boil. There was a lot of foam on the surface, so I spooned it off a few times.
I left it at a rolling boil for 10 minutes and then turned the heat down and let them simmer for 40 minutes (50 minutes in total).
Then I wanted to turn my dried chickpeas into “convenience” chickpeas.
I let them cool down completely by spreading them out on clean dinner plates.
And then I measured out 160g (2 x 80g portions) into freezer bags and popped them in the freezer.
A quick (non-organic) cost comparison, obviously excluding the cost of the gas to cook the peas:
Cans cost around 65p for 240g drained chickpeas.
I paid £1.10 for 500g of dried chickpeas.
A 400g UK can gives you 240g of drained chickpeas, so 3 portions at 80g each. That’s 22p a portion.
My dried packet, after cooking and filtering out a few dodgy peas yielded 12 portions. That’s 9p a portion!
So that’s a huge saving AND the bonus of ready to go chickpeas in the freezer, in nice little portions so I can just chuck them straight into dinner, whizz up some hummus or pop them in a salad.
Good for you lovely! I’m too lazy for all that. Canned for me. 🙂
Wow! I love this idea. My Dr is always going on at me about buying my own grains and seeds and soaking them and I haven’t tried it yet but I love the idea of this now I’ve seen it in action.