How To Make Your Own Chickpea Flour

Submitted by chefbrad on Wed, 11/19/2008 - 11:27.

Ever run across a recipe that calls for chickpea flour? No? Well, I have. Indians, Turks, Italians, Spaniards the French — they all use it. But finding a store that stocks chickpea flour can be a pain. Here's how you can make your own in a snap.

Chickpea flour — also known as besan, gram flour, channa flour, harina de garbanzo — is a popular ingredient in many Old World cuisines. It is the used in the batter for Indian pakoras. The French of Provence make a popular bread called socca with it that they bake in wood-fired ovens. Persian Jews mix it with ground chicken to form gundi dumplings. Chickpea flour can also be a great substitute for wheat flour in many recipes and for thickening sauces. Good news for those who want to go gluten-free!

Here's how to make your own. It should yield around 1 1/2 cups.

Chickpea Flour Recipe

2 cups of dried chickpeas

Add the chickpeas in small batches to a food processor, coffee grinder or blender and process until pulverized and smooth.
Run through a sieve to remove any large particles. Use as directed in recipes.

Toasted Chickpea Flour: toast the chickpeas in a 400°F oven for 15-20 minutes, or until the chickpeas start to give off a toasted aroma and are lightly browned. Cool and proceed with the recipe above.

chickpea flour

Submitted by Trish (not verified) on Wed, 03/10/2010 - 15:49.

THANK YOU so much!! this was so helpful and easily answered my question!!

Addendum

Submitted by Grains of Hope (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 16:24.

I forgot to mention that after the chickpeas are cooked, they will need to be dried before grinding into flour. Spread them on a cookie sheet and place in a 250 degree oven for 2 to 3 hours.

Of course, you can use them before you dry them by grinding, then reducing the liquid in your recipe. You may have to experiment a bit to find just the right ration of chickpeas to fluid.

Do you know if commercially

Submitted by Lucy (not verified) on Sun, 11/01/2009 - 08:46.

Do you know if commercially bought chickpea flour is normally cooked and dried first? I have been making Socca with bought flour and it was yummy, but sometimes it tasted slightly mouldy. So I just tried making my own fresh chickpea flour by milling dried chickpeas, from straight out the packet. It tasted fresher, but a bit bitter and not as nice. Also my grain mill only mills into quite coarse flour, so the Socca didn't stay together or cook properly.
Ideally I'd like to find pre-made chickpea flour that's fresh.

I would like to manke Hummus

Submitted by Randy (not verified) on Thu, 11/12/2009 - 09:43.

I would like to manke Hummus using ground, un-cooked chickpea flower. Can i do this, or is there a problem that i am not aware of. I am a bit concerned about the small bits of un-pulverized chickpeas hurting the teeth when the hummus is eaten.

homous

Submitted by Leslie-Maria (not verified) on Sat, 03/13/2010 - 14:22.

Re problems, see above posts re uncooked dry chickpeas. WHY would you want to use raw flour? I have made homous using sprouted, raw chickpeas (see Isabell Shipard's How to Grow and Use Sprouts book) and it turned out quite edible, but I'm not totally converted to raw foodism and prefer to soak and cook my chickpeas in a crockpot and then grind them up for homous.

Less digestive distress

Submitted by Grains of Hope (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 16:18.

Raw chickpeas (and other legumes) are extremely difficult to digest. The chickpeas need to be soaked and cooked before they are ground. The resulting flour will be much tastier and more likely to be properly digested.

I disagree

Submitted by chefbrad on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 07:10.

Although some recipes out there call for cooking the chickpeas first, I disagree for a few reasons:

It's not necessary. Yes, raw chickpeas and other legumes are difficult to digest. But nobody eats chickpea flour raw. It is used in recipes where it is cooked. And when a bean is ground to a powder, it cooks quickly.
It is unnecessarily complicated. First you soak them, then you cook them, then you dry them in the oven overnight, then you finally grind them. Sheesh! You may as well just drive to the store and by a bag of besan for all the trouble you just went to.

I've used home-ground chickpea flour many times for things like pakora, besan ka puda, socca and coating fried fish. It all tasted great, and neither I nor my family suffered any gastric distress.

chick pea flour

Submitted by Elizabeth (not verified) on Thu, 02/18/2010 - 11:46.

Thank you! This answered my questions of:

1) How do you make chick pea flour?

and

2) Do I need to soak or cook the beans first?

Just heard of chick pea flour on the radio today. I'm looking forward to making something using it.

Thanks again!

grinding chickpeas for flour

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 06/06/2009 - 04:48.

i found it took forever to pulverize chickpeas in a cuisinart food processor. i tried a small electric coffee mill and it took seconds. of course, the quantities were smaller but overall the process was much faster.