Batch cooking - part 1: chickpeas

Batch Cooking: Chickpeas

The key to batch cooking is to have an ingredient that can be used in a variety of ways. My favourite things to batch cook are chickpeas and other pulses. Batch cooking is also useful for breads, sauces, and flavour boosters. I recommend jarred chickpeas when cooking.

Ingredients

• 1 kg of chickpeas (4 cups)
• 2 1/2 litres of water (6 cups)
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• Pinch of baking soda
• 1 lemon
• 3 bay leaves

Method

In a mixing bowl, add the chickpeas, water, salt, and baking powder. Make sure to soak the chickpeas for around 4-6 hours before cooking. After the chickpeas have soaked pour them with their water into a pot. Cut a lemon in half and also add it to the pot.

Add the bay leaves into the pot and cook on low to medium heat, gently simmering until the chickpeas are soft and cooked through, which may take anywhere from one to three hours. Make sure that the chickpeas are fully immersed in water.

I can't stress enough the benefits of keeping and storing the chickpea water. I normally chill about a quarter of the chickpeas in their liquid to make hummus. The remaining chickpeas are spread out on trays and placed in the freezer; once frozen and ready, they can be split into bags.

My absolute favourite sandwich is sourdough with mashed chickpeas, gherkins, dill, capers, and mayonnaise, topped with fresh salad. This sandwich is a great way to use the chickpeas or alternatively, a chickpea stew with coconut milk, turmeric, and chilli, with lemon and greens, which is another great option.

I make my hummus with lemon, garlic, tahini, chickpeas, and olive oil, a really simple yet delicious recipe. Shakshuka or baked eggs with chickpeas are also great chickpea recipes. Chickpeas in a Greek-style salad with olives, tomatoes, capers, cucumber, chunked feta, and fresh herbs are amazing. Roasted chickpeas with olive oil, salt, and spices as a garnish or as part of a meal always go down a treat. This batch cooking method can be applied to other pulses or grains, such as quinoa and buckwheat, as well as vegetables.

Perfect Home-Cooked Pulses

Cooking dried pulses may not sound like the most enchanting or exciting thing to do in a recipe, or even anything new. But cooking pulses this way has seriously changed how I do things in my kitchen, how delicious my meals are, how much time it takes to put them together and how much they cost.

Pulses are an amazing ingredient to include in your diet. They are high in complex carbohydrates and fibre, high in protein and low in fat, while being loaded with vitamins.

I have moved from using tinned pulses to cooking my own, from scratch, in big batches and freezing them cleverly in portions, ready to make into hummus, soups or stews. They are so much more delicious and buttery cooked at home, and the process is one I love – running your hands through a bowl of dried beans is so satisfying, as is opening a freezer drawer packed with ready-to-go little bags of beans.

It is worth mentioning that the length of time it takes to cook a dried pulse will depend on how long ago it was dried. The older it is, the longer it will take to cook. I would encourage you to buy pulses from places where they are less likely to have been sitting around for a long time; supermarkets and anywhere that has loose pulses to buy by weight are good options.

If you want to find out more about pulses, get yourself a copy of the brilliant book Pulses by Jenny Chandler, which is a pulse bible and has inspired some of the techniques below.

Soaking

Most beans will benefit from a little overnight soak in double their volume of fresh cold (ideally filtered) water. Soaking pulses makes them much easier to digest and reduces their famous side-effects as well as their cooking time; it also allows them to cook more evenly. If you don't have time to soak them, don't fret, as there are a couple of other options.

Either give them a quick soak, for as much time as you have but ideally for 2 hours, or cook them without soaking – though in my experience the time you save by not soaking them will only be replaced by the extra time they take to cook.

Cooking

To cook, drain the soaked pulses, put them into your largest pan, and cover with cold water to come about 3cm above the level of the pulses. Bring to the boil, then boil steadily for 5 minutes (10 for kidney beans) – this is important, as it deactivates the toxins in the pulses – and after that turn down the heat to a very gentle simmer and cook until tender and creamy.

Cooking on a low heat like this will make sure the skins stay intact and that they cook evenly. It is better to shake your pan rather than stir with a wooden spoon, as stirring will break the skins of the pulses.

A cooked pulse should remain intact but should collapse into a buttery, creamy mush when squeezed. Chickpeas will remain a little harder but should still be soft throughout.

I season my pulses once they are cooked, as seasoning them while cooking is said to toughen the pulses and give them a powdery texture. They do need a good bit of seasoning once they come off the heat.

Freezing

You can freeze your cooled pulses in their cooking liquid, in portions as they would come in a tin, but I prefer to freeze them without their liquid. I season them well, then drain the liquid and allow the pulses to cool before freezing them in mealsized bags. If I have time I freeze them on a tray first, to stop them sticking together, and bag them up once frozen.

Soaking and Cooking Times for Dried Pulses

QUICK

Soak 30 Minutes + Cooking 30–40 Minutes

• Lentils and split peas
• Moth beans
• Mung beans

SHORT

Soak 2–3 Hours + Cooking 30–40 Minutes

• Aduki beans
• Black-eyed beans

MEDIUM

Soak 4 Hours + Cooking 1–2 Hours

• Borlotti beans
• Butter beans
• Cannellini beans
• Haricot beans
• Kidney beans
• Pinto beans

LONG

Soak 8 Hours Or Overnight + Cooking 2–3 Hours

• Chickpeas
• Fava beans
• Soya beans

Chickpea Recipe Ideas

• Throw in a sandwich with chopped shallot, gherkins, dill and a yogurt mayo dressing. Kind of like a tuna mayo except not (I have always HATED tuna).
• Cook quickly with coconut milk, turmeric, chilli and green veg from the freezer and topped with yogurt and herbs
• Throw into a weekend shakshuka
• Add sustenance to weekday salads of tomatoes, cucumber, feta, avo and good oil
• Roast in the oven in a traybake
• Roast with smokey spices until crisp for a snack