For the most part, the skin stays. Canned beans have them. The skins are ground up with the rest of the dried garbanzo to make falafel. Humus is a puree, who can tell if there is a skin or not? But at home, where details get noticed, a cook, if so inclined could par cook the bean, place them in cool running water and rub the beans together to remove the bean hull.
Why bother? Is there any difference in the taste? Is the extra labor worth the effort? These are really good questions to ask when assessing a new kitchen trick. While scrounging cookbooks, looking for something new with the pound and a half of dried legumes in my cupboard, Alice Waters in her book, Chez Panisse Vegetables, taught me about existence of the garbanzo skin. I did notice the difference - the beans were noticeably softer and evenly cooked. But skinning of the bean took a deal of work, many changes of water and although I husked about 1 cup of garbanzo peels, I am not sure if the work to result ratio was enough to claim victory.
I do know enough about legume physiology to know that removing the skin did not help the dried bean absorb moisture. Even without a skin, the outside of the bean/seed is not porous, water can only enter through the hilum – the small opening in the curved edge of a legume. Although the seed coat does not allow water through, soaking does hydrate and expand the coat allowing water into the bean at a greater rate. Depending on the type of bean, it can take up to 10 hours at room temp to fully hydrate.
Salt also increases the ability of a bean/seed to absorb water. Sodium displaces the minerals calcium and magnesium in the cell wall allowing for a greater absorption rate – 2 teaspoons of salt per quart/liter of soaking liquid will cut the cooking time in half. But there is a price to pay for convenience – pre-salting does change the texture, producing a grainer bean.
In an era of slow cookers and pressure cookers - salting the soaking liquid is a bit of an overkill – with the former you’re in no hurry with the latter, a couple of minutes isn’t going make that much of a difference in pretty quick process. The creamy texture is worth the time saved. As to the arguably improved texture that comes from hulling garbanzos, all I can recommend is to try it once and find out for yourself.
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3 comments:
Are the skins more identified with one kind of garbanzo than another? Mine came from Spain or Italy, and i only noted the skin at the end of 45 min of cooking after soaking all night. This is my first foray into dried garbanzos. At the 45 min point some of the shells started to pull away, and i'm thinking of removing them.
Guess the most important question is, does the cooking time have any impact on the skin removal? Does their pulling away indicate that I've cooked them too long?
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Am I supposed to stop the simmering before the skins pull away?
Thank you for any help you can give Saucymon!
You are just about the only one dealing with the skin scene!
I'm serving them two ways; floured and fried ala Giada, and in a fabulous mediteranian salad.
Maybe remove them for the salad, and leave 'em on for the fry.
After shelling the chick pea after soaking and cooking, this is my experience. It took me 1 hour and 10 minutes to shell one cup of garbanzo beans.
It seems that cooking them a little longer helps the shelling. Larger beans were easy, small beans difficult, probably b/c large beans had thicker shells which were easier to remove.
I cannot imagine trying to shell them prior to cooking, since the cooking facilitated the shelling considerably.
By the time i was finished with this cup of garbanzos, i was entirely sick of them. Way too much work.
Since they are so heart health, i will serve them, but will use the canned variety. Spending a day with garbanzo beans is just too much effort and time.
That's a really delicate process. Thanks for laying it out so detailed.
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