This easy 4-ingredient Chickpea Chips are a healthier snack than potato chips and are packed with plant-based protein and fiber. Bonus, these vegan, gluten-free chickpea flour chips are perfect for dipping into guacamole or vegan nacho cheese sauce and making your party platter healthy and tasty.
I created this recipe to provide a healthier, protein-rich alternative to traditional chips. These chips are quick to make, ready in just 16 minutes, and packed with plant-based protein from chickpea flour.
Unlike store-bought options, which can contain unhealthy fats and artificial ingredients, these homemade chips use simple, wholesome ingredients. You can change the seasoning to make them even more special – you can enjoy them with a variety of flavors, from classic sea salt to spicy chili powder.
These chips offer a tasty and nutritious snacking option that you can feel good about.
Chickpea chips, also known as chickpea flour chips or chickpea flour crackers, are crunchy thin crackers made of garbanzo flour or besan flour. They are nutritious vegan snacks loaded with plant-based protein and gluten-free, and egg-free.
Ingredients and Substitutions
It’s very easy to make your own chickpea chips at home using three simple ingredients. All you need to make crunchy besan crackers are:
- Chickpea Flour, also known as besan flour or garbanzo flour. While besan flour and garbanzo flour are not exactly the same thing, both having different amounts of fiber and water absorption in recipes, they both work to make chickpea chips.
- Olive Oil or neutral oil like almond oil or melted coconut oil.
- Favorite Spices – optional, you can make plain chickpea chips, but we love adding garlic powder, salt, pepper, cumin, and a pinch of turmeric to boost their yellow color and make them look like chickpea flour tortilla chips.
How To Make Chickpea Chips
- First, sift the chickpea flour with a fine sieve. This is very important because chickpea flour always clumps up into lumps, and there always are small pieces that you don’t want to add to chickpea chips.
- Stir in the remaining ingredients, including lukewarm water, olive oil, sea salt, garlic powder, and turmeric.
- Stir the ingredients with a spoon first, then mix with your hand to knead the dough and form a ball. The dough is tough but should come together. If too dry, add 1 tablespoon more lukewarm water. If too wet, add extra chickpea flour. You should obtain a small dough ball, the size of an orange, with a tough texture, not dry or wet.
- Sprinkle chickpea flour onto a large piece of parchment paper. Place the dough ball in the center of the piece of paper and slice the ball in half.
- Set aside half of the dough for later. Press the over half into a rectangle shape, then place another piece of parchment paper on top of the dough ball.
- Press with the palm of your hands to flatten and start rolling with your rolling pin. To make a nice rectangle and shape triangle chickpea tortilla chips, fold the parchment paper into a rectangle shape, as seen in the pictures below.
- Roll into a 5-inch x 9-inch (12-cm x 24-cm) rectangle. This garbanzo bean chip recipe is slightly tough to roll, but press hard and roll thinly to make crunchy chickpea chips.
- Next, peel off the top piece of parchment paper and use a sharp knife or pizza cutter to cut the dough into triangles.
- Now, set the tortilla chips apart onto the parchment paper to ensure they don’t stick to each other. This makes the sides of your homemade chickpea chips bake properly. If they touch each other, the sides stay soft.
- Slide the piece of parchment paper with chips on it onto a baking sheet.
- Bake in preheated oven at 350°F (180°C) for 6 to 8 minutes or until golden brown on sides and crispy.
- Remove from the oven and cool down on a cooling rack.
Choosing The Chickpea Flour
You can use any sort of chickpea flour but keep in mind that variety impacts water absorbance.
There are two types of chickpea flour available at the grocery store:
- Besan flour or gram flour is made from brown roasted chickpea, and it’s much finer. It needs less water.
- Chickpea flour or Garbanzo bean flour is made from white roasted chickpeas. This is coarser than besan flour and needs more water to come together.
That’s why this chickpea cracker recipe provides a range of water that you will have to adjust depending on the type of chickpea flour you used.
Serving Suggestions
These chickpea chips are delicious on their own as a healthy snack food but even better dipped in:
- Guacamole
- Hummus
- Salsa
Another great idea is to make a platter of loaded nachos using your chickpea tortilla chips as a healthy nacho replacement.
Spread a layer of chickpea chips on a baking sheet and top with a layer of lentil taco meat, and vegan cheese and bake 6-8 minutes until the cheese is melted.
Serve the chickpea chips topped with salsa sauce, coconut cream, mashed avocado, and cilantro.
Storage
These chickpea flour crackers store very well at room temperature in a sealed container.
Place the container in a dark place, not hot, and you can keep these chickpea tortillas chips fresh and crunchy for up to 2 weeks.
You can freeze the chickpea chips in zip-lock bags and thaw them at room temperature the day before.
More Chickpea Flour Recipes
I love to bake with chickpea flour because it makes delicious healthy vegan, gluten-free recipes.
Below I listed more chickpea flour recipes for you to try.
Did You Like This Recipe?
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Chickpea Chips
Ingredients
- 1 cup Chickpea Flour - besan, gram, garbanzo bean flour
- 2 tablespoons Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
- 2-3 tablespoons Lukewarm Water
- ½ teaspoon Salt
Spices
- ¼ teaspoon Garlic Powder
- ¼ teaspoon Cumin
- ¼ teaspoon Turmeric
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).
- Measure your flour and sieve with a fine-mesh sieve. Press the flour lumps onto the mesh to get the thin particle of flour to go through. Discard the small impurities left inside the sieve.
- Stir in spices, olive oil, and lukewarm water. Start mixing with a spoon, then knead with your hands. Depending on the type of chickpea flour you used, you may have to add more water or flour. If too dry, add more water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until you can form a ball the size of an orange. The dough is tough but not wet or sticky. If sticky or wet, add sifted flour.
- Divide the dough in half. Place half of the dough between two pieces of parchment paper – you can sprinkle some chickpea flour on the paper to prevent the dough from sticking to your paper.
- Press dough with your hand, start to roll as thin as possible – the thinner, the crispier! I recommend rolling the dough into a 5×9-inch rectangle (12×24 cm) to make 28 thin, crunchy chips. Watch my picture above in this post to see how I fold my paper to encase the dough into a rectangle shape and make perfect triangle tortillas.
- Peel off the top piece of parchment paper, cut out triangles. I get 28 tortilla chips from half the dough and spread them apart to prevent the chips from touching each other.
- Slide the piece of parchment paper with the chickpea tortilla chips onto a baking sheet.
- Bake on the center rack for 6 minutes or until golden brown and crispy.
- Meanwhile, repeat the same process to roll the leftover dough and create more chips.
- Serve on its own or with guacamole, hummus, or as a base to loaded nachos.
- Store for up to 2 weeks in a dark, dry place in a sealed container.
Any advice on adding nutritional yeast? A cheesy flavor sounds great, but I’m worried the amount I would need might change the batter significantly.
I don’t think you’d need to add too much of it to be honest! What you can do is mix nutritional yeast with paprika and salt and sprinkle that on the chips at the end.
These are so good I added a sprinkle of nigella seeds too.
Fab recipe
I made these with Besan & salt only, no other seasoning. They turned out perfectly & they do stay crunchy when stored. I did have to bake them a bit longer even though mine look thinner, but I know that’s probably just my oven. I ate them with an almond & sun-dried tomato spread. It was such a filling & delicious snack.
My dough did seem to dry out pretty fast, so I had to work quickly (I used avocado oil though & Idk how that impacts the dough). I used all 3 tablespoons of water (I might use a bit more next time since my flour seems to be highly absorbent).
Do you think this recipe could be made without oil? Or is there a substitute that could be used potentially?
I’ve never tried without oil, I don’t think it’d really work to be honest.
Do you think it might work if I would soak my own chickpeas first and grind them in a blender? How might the recipe measurements change? Does one cup dry flour equal two cups soaked, drained beans in a blender? It might be hard for me to get flour sometimes I think. Tia.
Unfortunately no, you do need chickpea flour for this recipe.
Looks like a great recipe! Thanks for sharing I really hope it comes out okay. Why does it say 3 grams of sugar per serving? I thought there is no sugar in chickpea flour.
There’s 10 grams per cup of naturally occurring sugars within the chickpeas.
There’s definitely some sugar in chickpea flour, about 10 grams for every 100 grams.
This looks like a great chickpea chips recipe, and I look forward to trying it. Thanks for the recipe and detailed instructions!
I rarely comment on these. But I have to say, this is one of my favorite recipes. I use the published ingredients as a base and then embellish the seasonings according to my tastes or interests (e.g., Italian, Mexican, etc.) The experimental opportunities are numerous! I may adjust the other ingredients depending on what I’m wanting to toss in (i.e., water or oil type additions).
This is the only recipe that seems to work for. It’s highly flexible! I love it!