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With nothing else to do during long days on the road, it’s easy to overeat. And while it’s convenient to stock many packaged, store-bought snacks in the RV, there’s nothing more healthy than ones you can make yourself. A perfect example…Roasted Chickpeas.
You’ll be surprised how satisfyingly crunchy these puppies are; sort of like a cross between a potato chip and a corn nut, except WAY more healthy. A ½ cup of chickpeas gives you 8 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber, tons of vitamins & minerals, and long lasting energy thanks to their low glycemic rating.
And did I mention easy? With pretty much, well, ONE ingredient, and a few spices of your choosing, this is my sort of recipe. Let’s get rolling!
Drain and rinse two cans of chickpeas (AKA garbanzo beans) very thoroughly with cold water. This next step is super important and will make or break the crunchy goodness; place them on paper towels and dry them off like crazy. I mean it…any excess water will mess with the roasting process, so take your time here and get them dry. I usually let them sit a good 10 minutes and then replace the paper towels once more. I like to use the sitting time to rub the skins off the chickpeas. This is timely and not necessary, but it’s sort of therapeutic in a weird sort of way, so I enjoy it.
Next, get your oven hot. Around 400 degrees should do it, but you might have to play with this eventually, as you watch their progress. Lay the chickpeas in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast for 15 minutes.
Pull the beans out of the oven, spray them with olive oil and toss them around. Now here’s where you can get creative. You can spice these a bazillion ways before roasting them a final time. James prefers when I use creole seasoning, but any combination will do.
With today’s batch, I made four varieties:
1) Creole seasoning
2) Cumin and garlic powder
3) Weber garlic and herb seasoning
4) Cinnamon and sugar
I don’t measure a thing…just sprinkle on your seasonings of choice liberally, and then pop them back in the oven for another 15 minutes. Pull them out at this point and test one. Some batches will be done after the total 30 minutes of roasting time. But, if they still seem soggy, pop them back in and watch them carefully. If they are browning too quickly on the outside, but soggy on the inside, turn your temp down to 325 degrees and go another 15 minutes. Each batch seems to need roasting times adjusted a little differently, so keep close and keep checking on them, because they burn quickly!
Another tip; let them cool in the oven as the oven cools. It seems to make them a bit crunchier to cool slowly, and the crunchier the better in my book.
Two cans will make about four ½ cup servings. Since these little snackity snacks are so easy to overeat, especially when mindlessly RVing along, make sure you measure ½ cup servings into baggies right away so you won’t overeat them! Each half cup serving is about 150 nutrition-packed calories. Eat up, folks!
Guess which of today’s 4 flavors was almost-3-year-old grandbaby Amelia’s favorite…