3 Words

3 Words: Mash Your Chickpeas

This simple tip will change your relationship to garbanzo beans

Mashed chickpeas bolster the sauce for a clean-out-the-fridge vegetable stir-fry. Photos: Kerri Conan

Witness the magic that happens when you mash chickpeas: They disappear. In a good way. Imagine what this stir-fry would be like if instead of a hearty sauce to coat crisp-cooked vegetables, you end up with a handful of errant beans bobbing in a watery pool at the bottom of the pan. No one wants that. Join me in this garbanzo shattering, starting with the stir-fry here and ending with endless ideas.

Mashed versus roly-poly: Would you rather have texture in every bite or have to fight to get every bite on your fork? Let’s say you succeed and spear a whole chickpea or stabilize a couple in a spoon. You’re rewarded with a gritty bean that is only creamy when it’s cooked until it falls apart. I vote mash.

The tools of the mashing trade: Salad fork, multi-holed potato masher, or my fave — the flat-bottomed meat pounder.