Cooking chickpeas in a pressure cooker: Chickpea with Quinoa, Broccoli, and Marinara served with Jerk Tempeh and Avocado

This past weekend for a potluck dinner, we brought a quinoa and chickpea dish that was my wife's creation. I used the Instant Pot to prepare the chickpeas. I found well done step-by-step directions for preparing chickpeas at a nice blog, Low Fat Vegan Chef. Instant Pot recommends a cooking time of 35-40 minutes unsoaked, or 20-25 minutes soaked.

I'll have to fine tune it, such as by adding baking soda, salt, or kombu (my wife likes an Indian chaat spice mix, and uses that instead), but what I did was put dried chickpeas in the Instant Pot, covered the chickpeas with boiling water, and let it sit, covered (I just put the Instant Pot top on), for about an hour (this is the Low Fat Vegan Chef's quick soak method). I drained the chickpeas, put enough water back in to just cover the chickpeas, and cooked for 23 minutes on high pressure. It was good, though it could have cooked a bit more. I think I'll try 25 minutes next time or skip the soaking entirely and just go with 40 minutes in the pressure cooker.

By the way, one reason I got this pressure cooker in the first place was to make yogurt. I found a simple approach that calls for just putting unsweetened soy milk with vegan yogurt starter into the Instant Pot and pressing the yogurt button; it's done 9-10 hours later.


So, on to tonight's dinner. This weekend, my wife mixed the chickpeas with Indian chaat spice, as well as quinoa. It was good but could use more flavor, so I reinvented it tonight. I mixed in some marinara sauce, a bit of chopped onion and chopped shallot, soy sauce, and dried oregano, and simmered for 10-15 minutes. I also sautéed, with no added fat, tempeh and shallot, then put a little soy sauce on top and sprinkled on jerk seasoning.

Dinner was good! My wife and I agreed that the additions were quite worthwhile to the chickpea and quinoa dish.