There is a bag of dried chickpeas at the back of most cupboards that has been there for two years.
Cheaper than the tins next to it, and better food. Nobody uses it, because using it means deciding twelve hours before dinner that you wanted chickpeas.
We have written both answers on this site over the years, in different recipes, without ever settling it in one place. So here is the settled version, along with the method, and the one recipe where a tin genuinely will not work.
The short answer: Keep both. Dried chickpeas cost roughly half the price of tinned once cooked, and you control what goes in them, which is nothing. Soak them 12 hours, then simmer for an hour to an hour and a half. 2 cups dried gives you 5 cups cooked, which is about three tins.
Tins are for the evenings when dinner was not planned, and rinsing them well under the tap takes about 40 per cent of the sodium away. The only recipe on this site where a tin will not do is the chickpea bread, because that one needs them soaked and still raw.
Canned or Dried Chickpeas: The Honest Answer
Venny has written the same sentence into four different recipes on this site over the years: I always prefer to boil my beans at home. It takes time but there will be no added chemicals, salt, sugar, or preservatives.
That is true. It is also not the whole picture, because the shopping list on our budget page says chickpeas, dried and a few tins. Both live in this kitchen.
| Dried | Tinned | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | About half the price once cooked | About twice as much for convenience |
| Time | 12 hours soaking, 1 to 1.5 hours cooking | Open, drain, rinse |
| Salt | None unless you add it | Usually added. Rinsing removes much of it |
| Texture | Firmer, and you decide how soft | Softer, sometimes mushy |
| Best for | Batch cooking, salads, anything where they stay whole | Tuesday |
The honest position is that the tin is not the compromise people think it is. A rinsed tin is still whole beans with nothing taken out of them. And a dinner made with a tin beats a dinner not made, because the dried ones needed soaking yesterday.
Where dried chickpeas genuinely win
Where dried genuinely wins is cost and control. Twice the chickpeas for the same money adds up quickly when beans are the centre of how you eat.
And they are worth making the centre of it. A cup of cooked chickpeas carries about 14.5 g of protein, and a large share of the carbohydrate in beans never reaches your bloodstream at all. Between the fibre, the resistant starch and the oligosaccharides, a good part of it walks straight past the small intestine and feeds your gut bacteria instead. Across five populations, legumes turned out to be the most important dietary predictor of survival in older people, which we go into properly in the bean patties guide.
Always rinse a tin, and rinse it properly. Under running water, in a sieve, until the foam stops. Draining and rinsing takes off about 41 per cent of the sodium, against 36 per cent for draining alone, and it is also the part people most often tip straight into the pan. The exception is hummus, where a spoonful of the tin liquid makes it smoother. Choose one or the other, and know which you are doing.
How to Cook Dried Chickpeas
There is no trick to it. There is only a decision made the night before.
- Soak, 12 hours. Cover them with plenty of cold water and leave them overnight. They roughly double in size, so give them room and more water than looks necessary.
- Drain and rinse. Tip the soaking water away instead of cooking in it.
- Simmer, an hour to an hour and a half. Fresh water, plenty of it, cooked until soft. Older chickpeas take longer, and nothing on the bag tells you their age, so test one instead of trusting the clock.
- Keep the cooking water if you want a stock. It is worth more than tin liquid and has no salt in it. The one exception is if you changed the water to make them easier on the stomach, in which case the whole point was that those sugars went down the sink.
Two cups of dried chickpeas gives you roughly five cups cooked, which is about three tins. That is the batch we make, and it goes in the fridge for the week.
Cook once, freeze the rest
This is what makes dried chickpeas practical rather than aspirational, and it is the step that turns the bag at the back of the cupboard into something you actually use.
Cook the whole bag. Cool them, drain them well, then freeze them spread out on a tray first so they stay separate, and bag them once they are solid.
Frozen that way they pour, so you take out a handful instead of chipping at a block. They go straight into a soup or a stew from frozen, and they thaw in cold water in about ten minutes for a salad.
A tin costs you a trip to the shop. A freezer bag costs you nothing, and it removes the only real argument for buying tins in the first place.
The one thing worth doing differently
On a few of our bean recipes we suggest changing the water partway through boiling to make them easier on the stomach. The sugars that cause the trouble, raffinose and stachyose, leach into the water, and the studies that tracked them found the drop was much smaller when the cooking water was kept. The cost is a kettle of hot water and some of the polyphenols, and a review of the whole question still came down in favour of tipping it away.
The cost is a kettle of hot water. If beans have historically been a problem for you, it is worth doing while your digestion adjusts.
The Recipe Where a Tin Will Not Work
Our chickpea bread is the exception, and readers ask about it often enough that it belongs here.
That loaf needs chickpeas soaked but still raw. Boiling has already gelatinised the starch inside the chickpeas, so it cannot set again in the oven. A tin gives you a wet paste rather than bread.
The bread then bakes for a full hour, which cooks them through properly. That question comes up in the comments and it is a reasonable one to ask.
The same rule applies to our soaked-legume patties. If a recipe tells you to soak and not boil, the soaking is doing structural work and a tin cannot stand in. One limit on that. It works because chickpeas are low in the lectin that makes undercooked beans a problem. Never do it with kidney beans, which need a hard boil. There is more on that in the bread guide.
Chickpea Flour Is a Different Ingredient
Also sold as gram flour or besan, and it is not interchangeable with the beans in any recipe.
What it is good at is holding water. That makes it the thing we reach for when a mixture is too wet to shape, and the base of a flatbread that needs no rising and no tin.
It also makes a surprisingly good coating. Tossed over wet-cut vegetables with spices it sets into a thin crust in the oven, which is how we get baked zucchini to behave like something battered without any oil.
If Chickpeas Upset Your Stomach
Common, usually temporary, and we have answered it properly elsewhere rather than repeating it here.
The short version: start with two tablespoons a day instead of a bowlful, rinse tins well, change the water partway through boiling dried ones, and give it two or three weeks. Lentils are the gentlest legume to begin with. The full explanation, and the research behind it, is in our guide to bean patties.
Venny: One question we were asked in the comments years ago and never answered properly, so let me answer it now. A reader on a low FODMAP protocol said she was only allowed tinned pulses. That is a case where the tin is not the lesser option.
It is also a case where your dietitian’s instruction beats anything on a recipe site, ours included.
Low FODMAP is a short diagnostic process rather than a way of eating, and it should be run with someone who can supervise the reintroduction. If that is you, follow their protocol and treat everything above as a description of the food, not advice about your condition.
Venny is a medical doctor and a dietitian; Andy is a psychologist. This is general information rather than medical advice.
Chickpea Troubleshooting
They will not go soft
Almost always age. Dried chickpeas do not spoil, but the older they are the longer they take, and a bag that has been in the cupboard for two years can simply refuse.
Give them another twenty minutes before you give up. If they are still chalky after an hour and a half, they were too old, and no amount of boiling will fix it.
Add acid only once they are soft. Tomatoes, lemon or vinegar going in early will keep them firm for a long time. This is the usual reason chickpeas in a tomato stew never seem to soften.
The skins float everywhere
Normal, and mostly harmless. Skim them off with a slotted spoon if you are making something smooth, and ignore them entirely otherwise.
My hummus came out grainy
The chickpeas were undercooked. A food processor cannot rescue a bean that is still firm in the middle, and running it for longer just warms the bowl.
Softer than you think you need is the right target for anything blended.
They taste of nothing
They are a carrier, not a flavour. Season the dish, not the bean, and finish with acid, because lemon does more for a bowl of chickpeas than salt does.
The cooked batch went slimy
They were stored warm, or stored wet. Drain them properly, let them cool before the lid goes on, and use them within about four days.
What to Make With Them
Roughly in the order we actually cook them.
- Five-Ingredient Hummus: tinned is fine, no peeling, no oil.
- Chickpea “Tuna” Salad: the sandwich filling that converts people.
- Baked Chickpea Balls: the easiest thing to shape, and the place to start.
- Chickpea Bread: dried only, soaked and raw. Our most-read chickpea recipe.
- Roasted Chickpeas: the snack, and the one where drying them properly matters.
- Chickpea Meatloaf: whole chickpeas and chickpea flour working together.
- Baked Falafel: under thirty minutes, no frying.
- Mediterranean Chickpea Salad: the one that carries a dry-weight conversion if you are cooking your own.
- Creamy Chickpea Curry: where cooking dried ones is written in as a step you can skip.
Where to Start With Chickpeas
Put two cups of dried chickpeas in a bowl of water tonight. Boil them tomorrow while you do something else.
You will have three tins’ worth in the fridge and about half of dinner already decided for the rest of the week.
And, always, seek health consciously.
