Vegan for a Day: Chickpea Salad

If you’ve been following this blog, it’s not difficult to work out that I’m a bit of an omnivore. If you’re new to the site, or you’ve just clicked through from a search and are here about a chickpea salad recipe: yes, there’s one below that you can make without having to buy any special vegan ingredients that would go to waste in an omnivore’s larder. It’s a fully vegan recipe, but written by a non-vegan, so take it with as many grains of salt as you need. I hope you enjoy it anyway, as I found it surprisingly good.

I know both vegetarians and vegans, people who have given up animal products for ethical reasons and also those who just don’t enjoy the taste of meat. I can’t say I understand the latter, but I respect the former. I’m just not there myself.

I Admire Your Ethical Stance But I've Chosen Fried Chicken

— Sandwich Death Panel Czar (@JimBehymer) April 28, 2015

It’s easy enough to go vegetarian for a single meal. Grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, spinach pie, a cheese omelette and fried potatoes, a giant pile of deviled eggs–I can think of any number of vegetarian options I enjoy, but most of them will involve eggs or dairy of some kind, a no-no with the vegan diet. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve enjoyed a meal of hummus and pita with olives and pickles, but that’s about the only truly vegan meal I can think of that I enjoy regularly.

Chickpea salad is described in the Wikipedia list as “a vegan sandwich filling with a texture similar to tuna salad.” There is no dedicated entry for chickpea salad, and as many vegetarian or vegan restaurants as there are in a city like Chicago (Chicago Diner, Karyn’s, Green Zebra, Handlebar, Native Foods Cafe, Victory’s Banner, Kitchen 17, and many many more), I couldn’t find a chickpea salad sandwich on the menu at any of them.

So it’s a DIY project, and I’m fine with that. I’ve found a ton of chickpea salad recipes on the internet, though I’m not 100% happy with any of them. They mostly call for veganaise, which I’m not interested in acquiring. Some of them use hummus as the dressing but that seems a little one-dimensional, as hot as chickpea-on-chickpea action might seem. I figured there must be a way to make a salad dressing for this while following vegan rules.

So that’s the challenge, such as it is–not to go a meal without using any animal products, which though not as simple as it seems should be easy enough to do. I’m going to disregard every one of those links I’ve just posted and make up my own completely vegan chickpea salad recipe.

Since we’re also doing chicken salad sandwiches this month, I’ve been eating a lot of those, and some of what I’ve learned there is going to be helpful, mostly in terms of vegetable additions and flavor combinations. The trick is the salad dressing. Mayonnaise is an emulsion, wherein fat in the form of oil and water from the egg yolk are whipped together into a stable combination by combining them with an emulsifier, in this case lecithin, also provided by the egg yolk. (If you’re interested in the science behind emulsion, specifically as it applies to mayonnaise, I found this article interesting)

There are other, non-animal sources of lecithin though, including many vegetables and legumes. I ought to be able to create an emulsion using alternate sources. And who’s to say I need to closely approximate mayonnaise anyway?

Avocado has similar composition to egg yolk, though lower in fat and protein and higher in water and carbs, and is also a good source of lecithin for the emulsion. We can make up some of that protein by replacing some of the oil with another lecithin source, sesame seeds in tahini form. I’ll bet avocado, lemon juice, hot sauce, olive oil, and tahini will emulsify into a thick dressing that’s at least as smooth as mayonnaise, and probably way tastier. (SPOILER ALERT: they do)

As for vegetables, diced celery and some kind of onion are pretty universal for sandwich salads, carrots less so but I like the bit of sweetness they’ll bring. I wanted more crunch–I considered cucumbers but thought they’d make the salad too watery. Sugar snap peas hold up well in dressing and add their own flavor and crunch. With the Mediterranean feel of the chickpeas and tahini, I’ll add some kalamata olives as well, and some sumac to continue the theme.

Here’s the recipe

“Vegan for a Day” Chickpea Salad

If you want vegan and pretty, you’ve got the wrong guy

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes
Yield: 4-5 cups
A vegan alternative to tuna salad for a sandwich filling

Ingredients

• Salad ingredients
• 1 carrot, julienned into 1″ matchsticks
• 1 celery stalk, diced
• 1 small red onion, finely diced
• 1/4 cup sugar snap peas, cut into 1/2″ – 3/4″ sections
• 1 15oz can chickpeas, drained, lightly mashed with fork
• 12 kalamata olives, pitted and quartered
• 1 tsp sumac

• Dressing ingredients
• 1/2 ripe avocado, mashed
• juice of 1 small lemon
• pinch salt
• 3 dashes hot sauce
• 1/4 C extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 C tahini
• 1/2 tsp white pepper
• 1 clove garlic, minced

Instructions

1. combine vegetables and chickpeas and olives in mixing bowl
2. mix avocado, lemon juice, salt, and hot sauce in blender. stop and scrape down sides a few times if necessary, until smoothish
3. with blender on puree, slowly add olive oil, then tahini
4. once all is combined, add white pepper and garlic, then blend for a few minutes more until smooth in texture
5. add dressing to veggie mixture and stir to combine.
6. Once combined, add sumac and mix again

I spread a thick layer of chickpea salad onto a slice of an Italian sourdough bread that you’ll learn more about in my chicken salad post when it’s ready.

chickpea salad on Italian sourdough

I put tomatoes in contact with the chickpea salad, hoping they’d adhere in the sandwich better

Also, it gives me an opportunity to get the beauty shot

Then I added some red butter lettuce leaves and cut the sandwich in half.

Chickpea salad with tomato and red butter lettuce on Italian sourdough

I’ll be honest, the best thing about this sandwich was the bread. That’s no knock against the chickpea salad though–it was delicious but I used really great bread, which is almost always a good idea when you’re trying to make a great sandwich. The dressing had a bit of that bitter, almost-peanutty flavor you get from tahini, with a touch of heat from the hot sauce, a bracing sourness from the lemon, and the smooth butteriness of avocado. The mashed chickpeas were satisfyingly filling, while the veggies provided plenty of extra flavor and crunch. The occasional briny burst from a bit of olive was rewarding as well.

This chickpea salad is an excellent way to eat a meat-free meal without using meat analogues, using fairly common ingredients. I admit, not everybody is going to have tahini in their fridge–I keep it on hand because I enjoy making hummus regularly–but I think it should be fairly easy to locate in a standard grocery store’s International section. It was easy to make and delicious–not enough to convince me to change my omnivorous lifestyle, but good enough that I can imagine eating chickpea salad regularly, even when I’m not covering it for this site.

Jim Behymer

I like sandwiches.

I like a lot of other things too but sandwiches are pretty great