Why (And How) You Should Add Baking Soda To Your Chickpeas

I’ve been banging on about the merits of slow cookers, especially during a heatwave, all summer.

Even though they’re usually associated with stodgy winter dishes, their lower temperature and enhanced insulation mean they don’t warm your kitchen up as much as you’d expect.

Alongside a delicious coconut lentil soup and some Greek-inspired mains, I’ve been batch-cooking my own chickpeas, too. (Yes, canned is easier, but tinned chickpeas are also designed to keep their shape in the container, meaning they’re never quite soft enough for dishes like hummus).

Still, it wasn’t until last week that I tried a long-standing trick to make them softer, creamier, and more delicious – and I wish I’d started years before.

I usually add garlic, salt, and chilli to my chickpea water for a bit of added flavour. Salt might have a small advantage in softening them, but for the best results, you need baking soda.

There’s some interesting science behind the addition. When you add the baking staple to chickpea water, it slowly replaces the legumes’ rigid calcium ions with bendier sodium ions.

And the alkaline nature of baking soda also breaks down the bonds that hold their pectins (a type of plant fibre) together.

Combined, those factors mean that baking soda makes chickpeas soft, squidgy, and almost fudgy.

Their skins also soften and even begin to flake away depending on how long you cook them. That, I find, is especially useful for hummus – though I like a looser, softer chickpea for things like salads and chickpea curries, too.

I was amazed by how well the trick worked. Compared to chickpeas I’d stewed for hours, those cooked with baking soda became softer much faster – and eliminated that harder centre I could never quite coax into silky perfection.

You don’t need much to see impressive results. I use about a teaspoon per 500g of dry chickpeas, but some recipes halve that.

The amount you’ll need to add depends, partly, on how long you’re cooking chickpeas for. If you’re making them on the hob, more baking soda will be better; however in the slow cooker, where they stew for hours, try less.

Serious Eats notes that you don’t have to spend hours on the method if you don’t have time. You can soften tinned chickpeas using baking soda, too: just drain them, add enough liquid to cover them, and whack in some baking soda while they boil. Half a teaspoon per 400g can of chickpeas should do the job.

Test the chickpeas as they cook to make sure they haven’t collapsed completely. Once they’ve reached the desired texture, you can remove them and drain them.

This has an added benefit: the chickpea water from baking-soda-cooked legumes is a bit bitter and unpleasant. So, if you need to use this for your recipe, you can save the liquid from the can and use that later on.