For a healthy crunchy snack try your hand at Leblebi!
I did a search and don’t see any posts on chickpeas or garbanzo beans; no leblebi either. Crispy smoke roasted chickpeas make for a healthy nutritious snack, and smoking them in your CS adds to the tasty snack factor. It is hard to find a more economical snack.
Here is the basic recipe for my:
Spicy Smoked Leblebi
Cooked Chickpeas
Olive Oil – 1 TBSP per pound of chickpeas
CS Spicy Chicken Rub & Rib Rub – ± 2 TSP per pound of chickpeas
Begin with fully cooked chickpeas (I used canned). Drain chickpeas in a colander and rinse well with cold water. Sets beans aside to drain for 5-10 minutes, or longer to allow drying; put on a dry kitchen towel or paper towels to dry. This is a good time to remove any stray hulls or broken bits of beans. (In using different brands of beans while experimenting with this process I found that the cheaper store brands have many more husks and some seemed overcooked.) You will lose approximately 1/3 of the canned weight after this rinsing and draining process. (For instance; once I started with 44.5 ounces of canned weight and after cleaning the weight was reduced to 26.85 ounces; the final cooked dried weight on this batch was 9.8 ounces.)
Now that the beans are well drained and dried, toss with the olive oil to evenly coat. Sprinkle the spice rub over the bean and toss to evenly distribute. I suggest adding the spices incrementally and taste testing to your preference. (For one batch I used only the CS Chicken Rub and thought the results were a bit too salty.) Remember the flavors will concentrate during to cook as the chickpeas do lose a lot of water and therefore shrink significantly. Arrange in single layer on a cross wire rack; this a good use for your seafood grill if you have one. This is when I use Frogmats placed on the standard CS rack.
Set your smoker to 300˚ using your wood of choice (today I used a small chunk of pecan); don’t use too much wood as these do seem to take on smoke fairly readily. Start with a cold smoker (no need to preheat); today that was a starting temp of 74˚. I set the timer for 2 hours. After one hour, open the door to release moisture and again each half hour for the remaining hour. After the two hour cook I allowed by AmQ to reset to 140˚ for an additional hour, and checked on them each half hour. Opening the door this many times does extend the cook time but also releases moisture. This is a bit of a tricky product to smoke ‘cause to short a cook and they have a bit of a grainy texture, but too long a cook and they can become quite hard. There will be significant reduction in weight since chickpeas do hold a good bit of water. Remember you need enough time to allow the bean to dry out but don’t want to burn these bad boys.
Overall I’m happy with the results and will continue to refine this process.
Canned beans that have been rinsed and drained:
Beans coated with oil and spices:
Finished product:
Finished product:
They almost look too good to eat.
