You can make raw hummus with sprouted chickpeas, as well as zucchini, and avocado. I will post here the directions of how to sprout your own garbanzo/chickpea beans, then also include a raw chickpea hummus recipe.

First of all, for sprouting beans…guys, you DO NOT need a fancy $30 sprouting jar! You can use any large glass jar…and if you are anything like me and somewhat of a pack rat, then chances are you will have a couple empty jars stored away in your house, for just such an occasion. I use an old instant coffee jar and an old large honey jar.

1) For the jars, if they have plastic tops and you want to designate these as official sprouting jars, take the plastic tops, and just stab holes in them with a knife, like so:

Make sure you don’t make the holes too big, or else the beans will fall out

2) If the jars have metal tops, then all you need is a piece of mesh, a cheesecloth, nut cloth, or…tin foil (this is not recommended for health reasons, but I have used it and it works fine once in awhlie)! Place the tin foil/mesh over the jar in replace of the metal lid cover, secure it with a rubberband, and poke tiny holes into it as well. We are now ready for sprouting!

3) In the jars, place about 1 cup of chickpeas in each one, with about 2 parts water to 1 part chickpeas. You dont want to fill up the jar with chickpeas completely, as you need to give the beans room to expand and for air, so you don’t want them too packed in there. Fill the jar up with water, and leave them to soak overnight (or about 8 to 10 hours).

4) In the morning, you should notice that the chickpeas expanded a ton. This is a good thing. Empty the water and rinse out the chickpeas. Turn the jar upsidedown with the rinsed out chickpeas, and cover with your tops. Lean the jars up against the wall at an angle, making sure the chickpeas are dispersed and not all bunched up at the bottom.

5) Check on the chickpeas throughout the day, rinsing them out every 8 hours or so. after the first 24 hours (or less sometimes), you should begin to notice little tails growing on them:

DAY ONE

6) Keep rinsing them out and leave them to sit overnight again. In the morning, you should have a significantly larger sprout growing out of the beans:

DAY TWO

7) Congratulations, you have successfully sprouted chickpeas! Take them out of the jar, rinse them one final time, and store the beans in a container in the fridge. You can now make raw chickpea hummus, add them in salads or eat them plain like that! Try it, they taste great, sweet and crunchy!

Let’s go make raw hummus now!

Side note: Do not the leave the chickpeas longer than 3 days, the beans will turn rancid and you will have to throw them out. I did this as an experiment to see how long I could grow the sprouts, and turns out that was a very bad idea. Two days is the recommended time for sprouting chickpeas!