garbanzo bean crepes

I recently discovered an amazing thing: you can actually grind dried beans – just regular beans you’d get in a bag at the grocery store – into flour, and use it to make things! Apparently, this is not a new concept for everyone. In fact it is a common practice in other cultures. Garbanzo bean/chickpea flour is known in many Asian countries as ‘gram’. It is a staple ingredient in Indian, Pakistani, Nepali, and Bangladeshi cuisines. Chickpea flour is used in other cultures as well, showing up in pancakes with delicious fillings in Italy, France and Morocco, and in tortillas in Spain.

Interesting to me, and maybe to you, is that this healthy flour is gluten-free and has a higher amount of protein and other nutrients than other flours, and is a great source of fiber. Also, when mixed in equal parts with water, it can be used as an egg replacement in vegan baking! I’m so glad I discovered this!

So, of course, I had to try this wonderful phenomenon! I put a bag of garbanzo beans (a.k.a. chickpeas) into my food processor. I let it run for 5-6 minutes, during which it made an awful racket!! I mean, it was crazy loud. I checked on it every few minutes, and after it looked like it had turned into powder, I stopped the machine and sifted it. There were quite a few chunks left that hadn’t been ground, so I put those in small batches in my small electric coffee grinder, where they turned into a fine powder.

Now that I had my flour ready, I turned on my griddle to get nice and hot (medium high setting) and in a small bowl, put ½ cup of my chickpea flour and ½ cup of hot tap water with a sprinkle of onion powder, garlic powder, and salt and mixed it together. I let it sit for a few minutes to soften while my pan got ready. (This amount made 2 roughly 10-inch crepes.) Onto my hot non-stick griddle (you’ll want to use a small amount of coconut or olive oil if your pan isn’t non-stick), I poured half of the mixture and using the back of a spoon, I spread it very thinly in a circular motion. I did the same with the other half of the bean mixture. After a couple of minutes, once they looked dry on top, I loosened the edges all the way around, then flipped them over to brown on the other side.

spread batter thinly with the back of a spoon.

These soft, but crispy-on-the-edges crepes can be filled with anything you want! I sautéed mushrooms, peppers, and onions with some black pepper, and after putting it into my crepe, I topped with a drizzle of tahini, which is like peanut butter, but made from sesame seeds, and can be found in most grocery stores.

Till next time! 🙂