Roasted Unsalted Chickpeas (Nakhod)

The same crisp roasted chickpea as our salted nakhod, with nothing on it. What you taste is the chickpea itself: toasty and faintly sweet, a little like a roasted grain, with a hard clean snap and none of the salt hit. Plain enough that you notice the nuttiness that salt usually covers.

Unsalted is the cooking version. Without salt you can grind them by the cupful into a thickener, season them yourself to whatever level you like, or use them in a dish that is already salted elsewhere. If you want them ready to eat straight from the bag, our salted roast is the one.

How to use them

Toss them warm with chaat masala, chilli powder, sumac or a squeeze of lime and they become your own seasoned snack in about a minute. Grind them in a spice grinder to a coarse roasted gram flour and use it to thicken korma, coconut chutney and other ground pulse sauces, which is what pottukadalai does in a South Indian kitchen. Add them whole to a nuql tray with raisins and dried mulberries, drop them into shorwa or dal at the end for texture, or scatter them over salads and grain bowls instead of croutons.

Details

Also known as

Nakhod, nokhod, roasted chickpeas, unsalted chana, bhuna chana, roasted gram, pottukadalai, chana, Bengal gram, garbanzo beans, kabuli chana, ceci, pois chiches