Self-cooked chickpeas not as good as canned?

Question

I tried cooking my own chickpeas after being a fan of canned ones from Trader Joe's for a while.

I soaked them for 24 hours and then washed and cooked them in lots of water for 2 hours. They came out kind of cardboardy (lacking in flavor and harder to chew).

I guess canned chickpeas get softer from being canned. Still, is there anything I can do to improve mine?

I salted them after cooking. Is that a mistake? (I figured it's less sodium for the same saltiness in taste, because all the salt will be on the surface)

Answer 1

I have made chickpeas 2x recently and I was happy with them. What I did:

1: Rinse and then short soak - maybe 1 hour.

2: Long cook, covered - more like 12 hours. Chickpeas are little beasts. They can take it.

3: Salted cooking water, enough to cover chickpeas and not extra. I think cooking in salty water gets the salt thru and thru the bean. I topped up with extra water once during long cook (I got up at night to check them). There was only a little water left when I was done and I kept it. It sort of became jellyish presumably with broken down chickpea. It was good. If you do that, salt your water to taste.

I would be nervous about scorching the bottom if cooking 12 hours on a stove top. Try a slow cooker or a dutch oven inside the oven set to bake, as low as it will go. Mine was actually in a foil tray covered with foil (1st time) and a dutch oven (second time) on my 2 burner gas grill with the peas over the cold burner and the other burner set to low. Didn't want to heat up the house.

If you try, post how it turns out in the comments.

Answer 2

This is a standard task for pressure cooking. Normally, pressure cooking only saves you time. But with dried legumes and with potatoes, the result is typically creamier.

Also, try switching your chickpea source if you only had your experience with one batch. Maybe you just happened to use a batch that was old, or grown under imperfect conditions.

The longer cook already suggested in Willk's answer is also a very good idea. I can't give you optimal times, but 2 hours are on the low side for most legumes except lentils. 12 hours is probably overkill, but you could start with 4 or 6 hours if you are cooking in a normal (non-pressurized) pot.