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4 hours ago
5
I’ve gone off script here and rated jarred chickpeas and tinned/packeted ones separately, because they’re such different beasts – and with a price point to reflect it. That said, I was pleasantly surprised by a few standouts in the tinned section, one of which is about to save me a fair amount of cash as I trade in my expensive jarred chickpea habit for a more frugal, but no less worthy alternative.
To taste these fairly, I drained and rinsed each one separately, labelled them up in bowls, then tasted them side by side. The ones I thought would benefit most from cooking each went into separate pans of malai sauce (albeit without cream) and were simmered, partially covered, for 25 minutes. The results were excellent in all but one case.
The best tinned and jarred chickpeas
Best all-rounder
Epicure chickpeas
£1 for 400g at Ocado
£9 for 12 x 400g at Amazon
★★★★★
What a pleasant surprise! The smallest of all the tinned chickpeas I tried, but so soft that they rivalled even the jarred ones. They come lightly seasoned, and they’re really rather lovely eaten just by the spoonful. You could dress them with a little olive oil and lemon juice for a salad, and they’d be fantastic lightly cooked with tamarind. I’m looking into where I can buy these in bulk asap.
Best splurge
Brindisa Navarrico chickpeas
Heaven. Plump, perfectly seasoned and blissfully soft. Once drained and rinsed, they don’t even need olive oil to improve them – like Bridget Jones, these are perfect just as they are. They’ll elevate any dish that requires gentle cooking, such as a chickpea gratin, rather than a rolling boil. My children adored them, even if it meant unsalted food for the rest of the week.
Best bargain
KTC chickpeas
44p for 400g at Asda
65p for 400g at Sainsbury’s
★★★☆☆
The only tin without a ring-pull, which is a hassle, because I hate tin-openers (though, obviously, I do own one). Otherwise I was very impressed: these small chickpeas are very lightly seasoned, and soft enough that you could easily use them in a salad, marinated with oil, lemon juice and a touch more salt. They’d be excellent cooked, too, in a curry or roasted with spices for a snack or salad topper. An excellent and very economical all-rounder.
And the rest …
Belazu chickpeas
£2.20 for 370g at Waitrose
£2.85 for 370g at Ocado
★★★★★
A very close second to the Brindisa jarred ones. Slightly less seasoned and with a fraction more texture, though still very soft. You certainly wouldn’t need to cook them – they’d be perfect to top a salad or make a ridiculously luxe hummus, although it would be a shame to blitz them when they have such a pleasing texture. Wait until they’re on offer, though, because they’re quite pricey for a small jar.
Bold Bean Co organic chickpeas
£3.25 for 570g at Ocado
£4.70 for 700g at Riverford
★★★★☆
Well seasoned, and only slightly less soft than the other two brands of jarred chickpeas, but there’s barely anything in it. I’d happily eat these by the spoonful without dressing, in a salad or lightly cooked – they’d work well with the halloumi in this tabbouleh, because they’re slightly less salty than the other jarred offerings.
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Cirio chickpeas
80p for 380g at Ocado
£1 for 380g at Morrisons
★★★★☆
These medium-sized chickpeas come in a carton and are lovely and soft, if unseasoned. I’d happily put them in a room-temperature chickpea salad with plenty of salt, though they’d be excellent cooked, too – they’d work very well in an all-in-one oven-baked curry, for instance.
Napolina chickpeas in water
78p for 400g at Asda
£12 for 12 x 400g at Amazon
★★★☆☆
The ring-pull snapped off when I tried to open the tin, but that may have been more down to my own ineptitude. Once drained and rinsed, these large chickpeas are unseasoned and slightly inconsistent in texture – some soft, some a little crunchy. They were so similar to the M&S chickpeas that I found them hard to tell apart. But what a difference on cooking! I’ve bumped them up from two to three stars because, after being cooked for 25 minutes in a spiced, seasoned sauce, they were superb, absorbing the flavours and improving in texture no end. I’d be very happy to cook with these again.
Cooks & Co chickpeas
£1.20 for 400g at Ocado
£10.17 for 12 x 400g at Amazon
★★★☆☆
Largely soft and small, these have a pleasant light flavour, even though they’re unseasoned. They’re certainly good enough to go in a room-temperature salad, or if you don’t mind using tinned chickpeas rather than soaked dried ones for hummus, they’d work very well too. Just don’t overdo the tahini: these were the only chickpeas with a discernible flavour other than salt or the lack thereof, so you wouldn’t want to mask that with a shedload of sesame.
M&S chickpeas in water
These large chickpeas were, like the Napolina offering, a little inconsistent – some were quite soft, others actively crunchy. I wouldn’t use them in a salad, but they were fine once cooked for 25 minutes, absorbing plenty of flavour, if staying very marginally firmer than the Napolina ones. A slightly longer cooking time would remedy that.
Waitrose Essential chickpeas in water
65p for 400g at Waitrose
☆☆☆☆☆
I love Waitrose. Like, really love it – the products, the lighting, the reassuring sense that nothing bad could possibly happen there (see also John Lewis). But no more. Just one of these chickpeas was enough to turn my middle-class worldview to dust. Because, within those flatteringly lit and reassuringly expensive aisles, lurk these monstrosities – chickpeas so actively unpleasant that, by the second taste, I was retching by the sink. Dry, chalky and, despite my best hopes, not even redeemed by a 25-minute simmer. My husband, who is more measured, described them as “comfortably the worst”. (And gently suggested that if I didn’t love Waitrose so much, I might have been marginally less upset by a tin of truly awful own-brand chickpeas.) Whatevs. They’ve lost their last star for wasting a pan of my excellent malai sauce.
