Chickpea Veggie Kebabs are a high protein, high fiber, all natural, delicious treat! Serve them as appetizers with a mint chutney dip or as the patty inside a burger with crunchy lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, or as the filling inside a whole wheat roti roll for your kids lunch box! These are sure to be a healthy, yummy hit, whichever way you choose to serve them.
Ingredients (makes about 12-14 medium sized kebabs):
- Chick peas or garbanzo beans (1 cup after soaking)
- Carrots, beans, potatoes (1.5 – 2.5 cups finely chopped)
- Onion (2 tbsp – finely chopped) (optional)
- Ginger, garlic, green chillies paste (1 tbsp)
- Asafetida (hing) (a pinch)
- Coriander (dhaniya) powder (1 tsp)
- Cumin (jeera) powder or cumin seeds (1 tsp)
- Turmeric (haldi) powder (1/2 tsp)
- Salt (to taste)
- Oil (1 tbsp)
- Coriander leaves (1 tbsp finely chopped)
- Lemon juice (1 tsp)
- Gram flour (besan) (1 tbsp)
Method:
- Pressure cook the soaked chickpeas (soak overnight and cook in a pressure cooker for 3 whistles and 8 minutes on simmer) with enough water. Remove excess water. I used the water to make roti dough. Mash the chickpeas well. Keep aside.
- Pressure cook the chopped vegetables with a little salt and a little bit of water (2 tbsp) (2 whistles). Remove the excess water and use it for making dhals, curries etc. I seasoned mine with some pepper powder and drank it up! 🙂 Mash the veggies well and keep aside.
- In a pan on medium heat, add a teaspoon of oil. Add cumin seeds, asafetida and ginger-garlic-chili paste. If using onion, add now.
- Add the mashed chickpeas, and vegetables to the above mixture.
- Add salt, coriander, turmeric and cook on low heat until the moisture completely goes away.
- When you feel the mixture is nice and dry, add the lemon juice, coriander leaves and turn off the gas.
- Dry roast the gram flour and add it to the mixture.
       
- When cool, make balls with your hands and flatten them out into a patty/kebab shape. Alternatively, you can keep them as balls and shallow fry in an appam pan.
- In a pan (tava), add a little oil and on low-to-medium heat, shallow fry the kebabs on both sides till a golden brown color is attained.
- You can serve these kebabs as an appetizer with a mint-coriander chutney or as the patty inside a veggie burger or as the filling inside a roti roll with some fresh, crunchy cucumbers.
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Serving Tips:
- This makes for a great lunchbox for kids. Here, I’ve served it with some chopped tomatoes, cucumbers on the side, with a snack box of bread/jam pinwheels and roasted sunflower seeds and grapes.
Tastes (Rasa):
Sweet (chickpeas, carrots, potatoes, beans), sour (lemon juice), salty (salt), bitter (coriander powder), pungent (cumin, chilly, ginger, garlic), astringent (coriander leaves).
Doshic Influence:
Chickpeas are a nourishing, nutritive, grounding and high fiber food that is a great source of vegetarian protein and complex carbohydrates. Being difficult to digest and prone to causing flatulence, any dish with chickpeas needs to have some pungent, digestive spices to help with the digestibility. Cumin and ginger are excellent spices to mitigate this effect of chickpeas. Vatas need to consume chickpeas and other such legumes with caution, but the spices make this dish a good choice for vatas to consume in moderation. Garlic is a warming stimulant and is great for blood circulation and for vatas and kaphas. It can tend to be pitta provoking. Fresh ginger is tridoshic in general and is a great digestive and anti-inflammatory root. Coriander is cooling and cumin is warming. Turmeric is great for vatas and kaphas due to its heat, and can be pitta aggravating in large doses. Overall, here is a recipe that is good for all doshas. Pittas should go easy on the pungent spices like garlic, chillies etc. and vatas should ensure that the chickpeas are well cooked and enough digestive spices like cumin, ginger etc. are added. Kaphas can consume this dish in moderation, with a good amount of warming garlic, ginger, lemon, chillies etc.
Effects on the Mind (Gunas):
Onions are tamasic in nature. Garlic and chillies can be rajasic in nature. Chickpeas with their tendency for flatulence are tamasic in nature. So, this dish is definitely tending towards rajas and even tamas. Ways to increase the sattva in this dish are as follows – using sprouted chickpeas will make the dish more sattvic. Increasing the amount of sattvic spices like cumin, coriander, turmeric etc. and eliminating rajasic ones like garlic and chillies is another way to increase sattva.