Canadian chickpeas are beginning to pop up in an unusual spot – the frozen food aisle.
Markets for frozen green chickpeas are growing in North America and the demand for chickpeas that are harvested before full maturity is rising among high-end chefs and restaurateurs.
Similar to peas, the chickpeas are harvested green, shelled and sold fresh. Alternately, they can be bagged, frozen and sold as green garbanzos.
Preparation is similar to frozen green peas.
The frozen garbanzo version began showing up in North American supermarkets last summer, including Costco outlets in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington.
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Bunyamin Tar’an, chickpea breeder at the University of Saskatchewan, said interest in green chickpeas could provide a niche market for varieties developed in Western Canada.
There are already a handful of U.S. processing companies that prepare and market green chickpeas.
One of the largest, based in Genesee, Idaho, has been using CDC Frontier, a kabuli variety developed at the U of S.
“They really like to use the Frontier to harvest as green pod,” said Tar’an.
“It’s a good taste and the sugar level is just about right.”
The soybean industry has already made similar market inroads selling immature soybeans as edamame beans.
They have been popular among Japanese, Chinese and Korean consumers for some time and have been gaining popularity in the United States and Canada in recent years.
Similarly, green chickpeas are a common food item in some European and Middle Eastern countries but have only recently gained a following in North America.
According to Tar’an, harvesting existing kabuli varieties for the
green chickpea market can be tricky because the window for harvesting is relatively narrow.
Ideally, the chickpeas would be harvested after the crops reaches a certain level of maturity but before the seed begins to change colour from green to beige.
Tar’an said chickpeas with a green seed coat would be ideally suited for fresh and frozen markets.
“We’re kind of targeting (these markets) with green cotyledon kabulis,” he said.
“With regular kabulis like Frontier, the window of harvest (for green pea processors) is very narrow but if you have a green cotyledon variety, you can expand the window of harvest for that market.”
Chickpeas offer many nutritional benefits.
They are an excellent source of protein, with levels in the 24 to 26 percent range.
They also contain beneficial micro-nutrients and are a good source of low glycemic carbohydrates, making them an ideal food for people with diabetes.
