Garbanzo Beans Recipe - The Chic(k) Peas! (2024)

by Matthew Robinson | Oct 23, 2015 | Blog | 0 comments

It is strange to me when foods have 2 names but are the same thing – sauce and gravy, soda and pop. The same confusion reigns when I think about garbanzo beans and chick peas. Is this some kind of alter ego thing? Can they not decide between being a pea or abean or is it some kind of bi-legumality that, for one reason or another, most other other beans don’t share? They are equally proteinacious but more flexible when it comes to being labeled. A type of amPEAdextrousness? I never know what to call them. To make it easy on myself I take garbanzo as the formal if I am in a serious culinary discussion and chick pea as the informal. But if we are talking informal and I want to use the funnier word, I say garbanzo because garbanzo is the second funniest word in the human language. According to my friend Ben, booby is the funniest. I can only agree. See – makes you laugh every time you say it.

Perhaps even more informal is ceci or cece and chana. The Dutch swerve from the C words and call them kikker. I am not sure why. I thought kikker in Dutch meant frog, odd. When I go into the grocery store, I use a different name each time. The store clerks get garbanzo most of the time and chick pea all of the time. If I put my best fake Italian accent on and ask for ceci there are a lot of blank stares then a few announcements over the loud speaker – Customer needs assistance at aisle 3. It takes about 35 minutes to resolve. Then when I finally have the can in my hand I say Oh, Garbanzo Beans… No, chick peas… with a belly laugh and look of confusion. Then in the same best fake Italian accent I say “Why so many names for a pea?” By then the clerks have had enough and they just shrug and begrudgingly ask if there is anything else they can do for me hoping I will just go away.

Whether you call them garbanzo beans or chick peas matters little when it comes to taste. Garbanzo beans are fantastic to cook with and a large variety of dishes can be made with them from hummus (which, by the way, is Arabic for chick pea.) to one of my favorites, falafel! One of the easiest garbanzo beans recipe is to simply spice them and roast them until they are crunchy. Since practically any spice mix will do, you can have a huge variety of roasted garbanzos – even sweet ones. Sweet or savory, they make from a great snack or party food.

Here is my roasted garbanzo beans recipe..

Booby!

I hope you enjoy.

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What is your favorite garbanzo beans recipe? Do you say garbanzo bean or chick pea?? Let us know all about it in the comments or on Facebook.

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