Roasted Salted Chickpeas (Nakhod)

These are whole chickpeas roasted until they are hard and crisp right through, then salted. The bite is much closer to a nut than to a cooked bean: dry, snappy, with a toasted grain flavour like the inside of a fresh bread crust and a savoury salt finish. In Afghan homes a bowl of nakhod sits out with the green tea all afternoon.

Roasted and salted, not raw. A dried chickpea needs a night of soaking and an hour on the stove; these need nothing at all. Salted is the one to reach for when you want a snack rather than an ingredient, and we list an unsalted roast separately for cooking and grinding.

How to use them

Eat them by the handful with green or black tea, mixed into a nuql tray with raisins, dried mulberries and pine nuts. Stir them into shorwa, dal or a thick soup right at the end so they keep some crunch, or scatter them over salads and grain bowls in place of croutons. They are good crushed over hummus, baba ghanoush and other mezze dips, and over chaat with a squeeze of lime. A spice grinder will take them down to a coarse roasted gram flour, which is the traditional thickener for a South Indian coconut chutney and works the same way in a korma.

Details

Also known as

Nakhod, nokhod, roasted chickpeas, salted chickpeas, roasted chana, bhuna chana, leblebi, roasted gram, chana snacks, salted garbanzo beans, kabuli chana, ceci tostati, pois chiches grilles, garbanzos tostados