Recipe: Roasted chickpea salad

I’ve been totally into my quinoa salads, but one key ingredient in them is a bunch of roasted chickpeas. So I figured that my next variation on the quinoa theme shouldn’t focus on the quinoa, but on the chickpeas. This is a salad that has loads of leafy greens and some great flavors packed into the chickpeas. It’s simply one of my favorites.

Roasted chickpea salad

Total time: 50 mins. Prep time: 15 mins + 5 mins. Cooking time: 30 mins. Servings: 3 – 5.

Ingredients:

• 1 can of chickpeas
• 100 grams of quinoa
• 3 – 4 big handfuls of fresh spinach
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 cucumber

You will need an oven and not much else. Just a big bowl for tossing and a knife and chopping board for chopping up the rest of the ingredients.

So this salad starts with some prep work. Boil the quinoa according to the packaging and let it cool to room temperature before placing it in the fridge. I like doing this the night before so the quinoa can cool down enough. My main trick for cooking quinoa is two fold. Firstly, I only eat it cold. When it is warm it is too gooey and porridge like and I dislike the consistency. If you let it cool however, the grains have a lot more texture and are a lot nicer when it comes to mouth-feel. Secondly, I boil the quinoa in some vegetable stock. This adds lots of flavor.

Step 2 that I prepare in advance are the chickpeas, however I think it may also be nice to have these warm too. In fact, I got into roasted chickpeas after making them as a snack once. I like adding quite a bit of cajun spice mix to spice them up and give them a bit of a kick.

What do you do? I adapted this recipe from here.

Preheat your oven at 200 Celsius. Cover a baking tray with baking paper and drain the chickpeas very well. You may want to rinse them and dry them in a towel as well to get rid of excess moisture. Add your spice mix and now comes the key part: no oil! That’s right, after that you just pop them into the oven and leave them there fore 15 minutes. After that give them a good toss and place them back for another 10 – 15 minutes.

All you have to do the next day is put your cooled chickpeas and quinoa into a big bowl. Add your spinach. I like getting baby spinach or if I don’t I like getting regular spinach which I slice into strips by the handful. Give it a good toss and add the rest of your ingredients.

Chop up your pepper and cucumber and give it another toss and you’re done! Of course this is pretty basic and if you’d like you could add some cheese or other veggies to change it up. The options are endless! I hope you enjoyed this absolute favorite type of food (I’ve been quite obsessed with salads again lately) and let me know if you make it (or something similar).

What recipe would you like to see next?