Roasted Chick Pea Snacks
I'm always on the lookout for a healthy snack instead of diving into a bag of chips and this recipe hits that spot. Crunchy, salty...they hit the mark all around and the types of seasonings you can use are endless. Need a little sweet and savory combo? no problem.
I have found that cooking dried garbanzo beans taste better than canned but this does add some time to the process. Canned will work just fine if that is what you have on hand. To speed up cooking from dried beans I use a pressure cooker. The beans will be fully cooked in about 40 minutes but you do need to let the pressure cooker cool down naturally so it's about an hour process total to go from dried to cooked beans. If you're familiar with pressure cooking I highly recommend this method. Use 3 cups of water for the first cup of beans and then 2 cups of water per beans thereafter. When I do this, I make enough extra beans to freeze and make hummus at the same time. Dried beans are an amazing value and are dirt cheap.
For both cooked and canned beans you can make as small or large a batch as you want but they do get smaller when roasted so plan on at least 4-5 cups. I like to make large batches of these with about 8 cups of beans. Rinse as much water as possible from your beans and set aside while you make your seasoning.
My Seasoning Recipe:
1.5 tsp sea salt
1 TBSP Chili Powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried peppers (any hot pepper powder)
1 TBSP nutritional yeast flakes
Mix all of the ingredients together in a ramekin or small bowl. I like to taste a small pinch and adjust any ingredients if necessary. I am going for a salt and spicy taste here.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the beans in a large bowl. Toss with about 1.5 TBSP olive oil. You want the beans coated evenly but not swimming in oil so add the oil a little at a time and adjust as needed depending on the size of your recipe and amount of beans you're making. Now start sprinkling the spice mix into your beans while gently tossing to evenly coat the beans. Reserve a small amount of spice mix.
Spread the beans evenly in a single layer on 1-2 baking sheets. Sprinkle the remaining spice mix on top of the beans.
Bake these for about 45-60 minutes in the oven, gently stirring every 10-15 minutes. You will see the beans begin to reduce in size, turn light brown and dry out. Towards the end of the cooking time remove a few test beans. Let these cool a couple of minutes before tasting. You're looking for a slight crunch here. They will become crunchier as they cool but you want to avoid chewy beans so cook until you get the slight crunchy texture.
I store these in Mason jars until I eat them, not that they last that long. In fact I have a camping trip coming up that these are going to be perfect for.
