Right after tofu, my favorite protein is the chickpea. Both of these things are totally blank canvases for developing and building upon any flavor you want. Because the chickpea is such a simple, cheap and easy ingredient to use, I always have multiple cans of them stored away in my kitchen cabinet. For this application (which makes perfect lunches for throughout the week), I combined chickpeas, pulsed a few times in a food processor with Vegenaise, a bit of red onion and carrot. It’s an excellent lunch—filling, nutritious and simple.
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CHICKPEA SALAD SANDWICH
- Yield: 2 servings 1x
Ingredients
Scale
- 15 oz. can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
- 1/3 cup Vegenaise, plus more to taste
- 1 TB tahini
- 1/4 cup finely minced red onion (optional)
- 1/4 cup grated carrot (optional)
- 2 tsp celery seed
- 1 tsp salt
Instructions
- Place the chickpeas into a food processor and pulse a few times to break them up. You want them to still be a little chunky.
- In a separate large bowl, whisk together the rest of the ingredients. Add the chopped chickpeas to the bowl and combine well.
- Chill until ready to serve.
Chickpeas is my favourite legume easily! I love making chickpea salad to, but I usually flavour mine with dill, lemon and a hint of liquid smoke. Yours sounds great too though.
I love chickpeas salads aka "mock tuna" salads 🙂 I add pickle relish to mine, or finely chopped pickles and sometimes fresh parsley. Oh, and lemon juice. I must try your idea with carrots soon.
I'm buying the groceries today and making this for lunch this week! Just curious – what's the purpose of the baking powder in this recipe? I've only used it in baking before, never a salad!
Thanks for your comment Diana … I hope you enjoy the recipe!
The baking powder will provide a more alkaline condition in the cooker, therefore yielding a softer bean. This is considered to be an "old fashioned" method, and some think it reduces the nutrition of the bean. However, I prefer beans cooked with some baking soda—but its really an optional thing.
So here's another funny story for you: I decided to make these sometime last week because my husband had just made a chicken salad and it brought on the craving, so I found this! We had just purchased a Vitamix, so I threw in all the ingredients and turned it on for just a few seconds! Oh my goodness, I had no idea how powerful it was! It over-mixed the ingredients to a liquid mush with no texture–though the taste was great! Not wanting to waste it, I ended up with the biggest batch of this recipe because I had to dice up a ton of celery, an extra can of chickpeas and 2 cans of vegan tuna from our little vegan shop in town. What resulted after all of that was simply delicious and incredibly satisfying for the crave of a traditional food. I will definitely be making this again, while noting the lowest setting of the Vitamix;)
I've never owned/tried a Vitamix, but from what I've heard, they sound super-powerful! Sometimes I am just lazy and mush everything up with a fork. : P Glad you enjoyed, Leila!