Shell beans and other legumes form such a versatile and nutritious food group that we should all be eating more of them. They go in everything, whether blended into smooth, creamy hummus; softened in hearty soups; or left whole and slightly chewy in salads. It was only a few years ago that I discovered they also can become crunchy homemade garnishes and snacks ready for all sorts of seasonings, as I share this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon.

I’ll be using a variation on this week’s recipe to demonstrate the magic that happens when you toast, grind, and bloom spices in my free Seeds of Flavor workshop at Free the Seeds this weekend. Join me Saturday, March 1, in Kalispell in Flathead Valley Community College’s Arts and Technology Building. The free daylong event will be packed with workshops, a giant seed giveaway, booths hosted by local farmers and organizations, and a special keynote speaker to celebrate a decade of this fabulous educational and family-friendly gathering. Find all the info you need (like the full workshop schedule) on the website of the event’s organizer, Land to Hand Montana.

Learn more about seasoning snacks and get the complete recipe for Zesty Baked Chickpea Snacks in my column.

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Twice as Tasty

I’ve recently started growing more shell beans and going through the process of letting the pods dry on the plant as much as possible, harvesting the fresh beans, and then letting them dry further before storing them. These dried beans are not the crunchy ones you want to eat out of hand; they’re still hard and indigestible, and they need to be sprouted, cooked, or both first.

In this week’s recipe for crunchy garbanzo beans, the chickpeas are actually cooked twice: once the way you typically cook beans, by soaking and then simmering them on the stove until soft, and then again in the oven to make them dry and crisp. They end up with an almost popcorn-like texture and absorb a range of seasonings.

These recipes form a good collection of different ways to cook and use dried chickpeas and lentils. You can find many more legume recipes in the recipe index.

• Soaked and cooked once: Harira (Moroccan Tomato Lentil Soup)
• Soaked, cooked once, and blended: Roasted Garlic Hummus
• Soaked, ground, and baked: Baked Falafel
• Cooked from dry: Spiced Red Lentil Dip
• Sprouted and baked: Crispy Sprouted Lentils

I’ve found that although pressure cooking speeds up the bean-cooking process, and makes my homegrown dried beans particularly creamy, chickpeas tend to become soft and fall apart. This is ideal for bean dips and spreads, but for chickpea snacks, I prefer to let the chickpeas soak overnight in cold water and then cook them on the stovetop, where I can monitor their progress and ensure they maintain their shape. If you’re really pressed for time, you can make bean snacks with store-bought cans of cooked chickpeas instead. Just look for cans with little to no sodium; most commercially packaged chickpeas are heavily salted.

You can learn more about using dried beans in this blog post.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.