Easy chickpea salad that’s a winner every time! This Italian salad is so healthy and the flavor is awesome. It’s really simple to make and is super flexible. I actually modified my original recipe by adding in a can of cannellini beans in addition to the chickpeas (also called garbanzo beans), plus some other mods. I go through it all, you can watch or follow along with me. This refreshing salad is perfect for entertaining, picnics, backyard parties and more. It is gluten free, dairy free, and will even satisfy your vegan friends too!
I needed to make this salad for a family member who requested it and so I figured why not pull out the camera and do a live so you can make it too!
Here’s what you need:
chickpeas
cannellini beans
kalamata olives (or a mix of kalamata and black olives)
roasted red pepper (From a jar)
artichoke hearts (from a jar)
red onion
pepperoncini
extra virgin olive oil
apple cider vinegar (you can use red or white wine vinegar too)
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN VIDEO:
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All right one two one two cool so welcome everybody this is Liz from simple Italian cooking and I’ve got a really easy easy salad it’s a chickpea salad and I’m going to show you how I make it it is a family favorite um it’s actually Sunday I wasn’t planning on
Doing a live um but uh this has been a request from one of my relatives uh that uh he just loves the salad and I promised I would make him make it again for him and uh I’m going to be in that area tomorrow not going to have time in
The morning so I’m going to do it today and I’m going to show you as I turn the camera on and see how it goes um very easy minimal prep and the great thing is is like I’m doing today I’m making it a day ahead it even tastes
Better after it’s had a chance to marinate so the first thing obviously is chickpeas so um before I do that actually my number one tip and secret where’s my car look here it is when making any type of salad is to rub the bowl with a garlic clove this allows the
Ingredients when you mix it up it picks up the flavor of the garlic gives it a nice subtle overtone without being overpowering so I’m going to go ahead and do that really quick and for this salad um I’m just going to use one garlic clove because I don’t want it to be
Overpowering for them um because I don’t know how much they like um garlic so so we tend to like it um a lot in our family uh in our household so what I do oops look at that let me cut that out let me just get another one it was a bad
Spot I tell you lately it’s been touch and go with garlic with the stores it’s like all right anyway I’m making this for relative and I want it to be the best I don’t want to Chin on it all right so I cut it in half
And with the open side just simply with your hands make sure your hands are clean obviously and just rub it and this is how I rub it it’s real easy and like I said that gives it a wonderful undertone I do this with any almost any type of salad um whether it’s
My anti Pasto salad whether it’s my just a simple green leafy salad with olive oil and vinegar that little bit of garlic really really helps and then what I do is I just go ahead and cut it into very thin slices and then kind of dice it up a little
Bit and go ahead and toss it in and I will leave the other half again I don’t know how much he likes garlic or not next thing I do is I’m going to focus on the beans that I’m using so sometimes I do just chickpeas this time
I’m doing chickpeas and a can of calini beans that’s how I made it the last time when we got together and it was received very well so I do rinse them I don’t want the um liquid that’s in there I want these nice and rent and and what this also does by
Doing the chickpeas and the calini beans first because it helps you gauge how much of the other ingredients you’re going to need so I rarely ever ever um measure with this actually I’m not even going to say rarely I never measure with this um salad so it’s very hard to
Um hard to give an exact recipe for it because you know like so many Italian recipes and salads you just kind of toss it together um and just about everything I’m using is organic um all the beans are organic the olives are organic the garlic is
Organic um all right so the next thing is uh the olives so I find that the olives is a really key ingredient on this it really gives it that um Mediterranean flavor and I mean really I’ve seen very similar recipes to this uh that aren’t necessarily Italian um but
Mediterranean so you can call it whatever you like so I am using um pitted calamada olives and um and most of them are camada but I am throwing in some black olives and the um just to give it a little bit of just a little bit more depth I not heavy on
The black olives because a lot of people don’t like black olives um and I always buy my Jarred olives pitted I used to not do that because I used to be like well you know it’s fresher if I pit them myself and this and that well yeah that
Lasted until one day my husband ate a salad of mine and I missed one of the pits and uh scared The Living Daylights out of me as he was choking because he choking on one of the pits and I swore I would never do that again so I always B
Pitted and even with the pitted you have to be careful because um it can sometimes there’s a little pit in there so just be really careful um so how much do you cut these do you slice them lengthwise do you cut them and half so they’re
Oval I wish I had a advice for that um I just I just kind of chop them up so my goal is with each bite to have some of the um Olive in it so um and if you are a little low on olives um then chop them up finer that
Helps you kind of extend the olives so if you just cut them in half like this and throw them in and you don’t have that many you’re not going to get much flavor throughout so it’s better to just cut them smaller and um no one’s none the
Wiser so I’ve been making the salad for I don’t even know how many years and each time I do it a little bit different so I was a little nervous when my sister-in-law was like yeah her husband wanted some more and how did you make it
Like okay I have it on my website but do it different every time anyway all right so the next thing that I have in here which is in my opinion really critical for this salad is some artichokes now I just buy these at Aldi’s unfortunately they’re not organic but um they have the
Best price and I like them because they’re just in water they’re not pre-marinated um so that’s really important for me because I want to have complete control over um the the flavor and I find that when I do the um marinated olives I lose that control and I get
Flavors in there from the herbs and the uh other ingredients that the manufacturers the food manufacturers put in there and it might taste great you know for other purposes but for mine so people like it the way I do it I get compliments every time I take this
Recipe to a uh cookout a picnic whatever um and I’m just so the way that these are done or these are quartered um and that’s what I like because it makes the chopping so much easier um to do that and uh I’ll see how much that is so just doing about this
Much looking looking off to the side to see uh if you can see because I have my camera over here or my computer so I can see what you’re seeing okay and then I just give it a quick rinse and try and squeeze out some of the excess water
Okay and then what I do I don’t throw it in whole because I I don’t want this salad to be where when you take a bite you’re just you get a bite that’s just artichoke it’s like oh I got the artichoke um no I want it to be evenly
Dispersed throughout the salad and so that’s why I chop them up um when I’m making a salad just for myself I’ll you know I’ll and I use these artichokes I will um I’ll just throw them in whole but that’s that’s for me you know when I
Make it for someone else I want it to be as perfect as possible so um oh I don’t know maybe this is half a cup 3/4 of a cup and I’m just going to toss them in and then the next ingredient that I have are some um sliced pepper and Chini
Again a huge huge huge time saer is to buy them already sliced um so this is sliced pepper and CH and um pepper and cheni are really nice because they’re not they’re vinegary so they give you some of that vinegar taste that you want with the olive oil in the salad um but
Pepper and Chini they’re not like jalapenos um even where they they’re overpowering um even banana peppers I think are spicier I think correct me if I’m wrong but we buy them and what I do again I just roughly chop it up in the salad so that a little bit goes in there
Guess that’s about a quarter of a cup I’ll do a few more I have done okay so if you um if one thing I like about pepper and Chen or things that are in like a vinegary type thing um is you can put them in sandwiches and and avoid having
To add add in extra vinegar um because it already has that flavor in there just makes it nicer easier and you don’t have to worry about stuff dripping all over the place okay and actually it’s really helpful too if you’re traveling a lot and um and like say you stop at Subway or
Something to get a sub and you you’re in the car and you don’t want it to be messy just put some of the bell peppers on it not bell peppers um you know the other peppers I just mentioned that like I’m drawing a blank on right now for
Reason um banana bell peppers thank you and um and that will give you that vinegar taste so just nice nice little tip that’s what we did when my husband and I did a massive road trip one time many moons ago all right so here I’m adding
In some red onion which to me the difference between using red onion and yellow or white onion even scallions is totally changes the salad not for better for worse it just changes it to a different flavor and I love that flavor I love the red onions with the olives
It’s just such a good mix I use it so many times if you follow me um on my email um or on my website you see that a lot of my salad recipes um will kind of have this classic combo of camama olives and the red onion
And peini and all that kind of stuff totally flexible this um the salad so flexible you can use my what I’m doing as a base and modify it however you want uh be creative um totally be creative and make the salad your own so I have here some um small
Tomatoes they’re well they’re actually very large grape tomatoes I’ve never seen them this large so um and what I do is I roughly chop them up and oh my gosh with fresh tomatoes from your garden can’t even explain how good it is and but aroma aroma would be
Fine any type of kind of a meaty San Marzano tomato would be fantastic used to grow them all the time have I have heirloom seeds that are from Italy from decades ago from my in-laws who grew them they from Italy seeds were from Italy from their family there I
Started growing them here and they kept the seeds I learned how to do all that from them preserve the seeds and I started growing them here and uh that was many years ago and so I Still Still grow them when I can all right and I think I’ll put I’ll do one
More so again you can use straight chickpeas done that many times you can even forget the chickpeas just do calini beans whatever you want and I again I use canned I just rinse them really well okay so another ingredient that I have and this is another key ingredient is roasted bell
Pepper save yourself the time and the headache buy them already in a jar um and it will save you so much time and I just like the texture that way it’s not crunchy I just make sure I give it a good rinse so there’s no seeds in
There and you know some people are really sensitive to seeds um with their stomach so I try and not have seeds in there and then what I do here is again about the same size as the tomatoes everything else with this type of salad you really want to cut and chop
All your ingredients about the same size makes it so much easier for people when eating um so maybe the same size as the chickpeas probably wouldn’t go much larger than that okay I miss my little scooper I don’t have here so you add that so roasted red
Pepper yeah I think I have a good enough amount in there maybe I’ll do a little bit more um roasted red pepper calamada olives uh Red Onion Tomatoes uh artichokes uh classic combination garlic you put those together in any form and life is good and life is delicious all
Right and now what I’m going to do is give this a stir and let’s see how everything looks all nice and Incorporated and again remember I put that garlic on the bowl and actually I’m going to show you well let me finish doing this yeah this is this is looking good I like
The evenness of everything and the colorful it’s such a colorful salad I’m going to show you closeup of this let me change the camera angle here so that you can see that and you can see how delicious that is and we haven’t even put in the olive oil and
The vinegar I’m going to talk about that in just a second very economical dish this is perfect for picnics um I need to get the olive oil and the vinegar so excuse me for a minute um but yeah so this is totally like the best recipe you could ever make for a
Um where is it have to use this okay I’m using um apple cider vinegar which is what I normally use it’s just I wanted to use a different brand which is why I said what I said but you can use it for picnics you can use it
For anything I I make the salad all year round it’s not just a summer and spring salad I have it in the winter time it is so healthy and it is so refreshing and it gives you energy and I wish everybody could have this I’m just going to drizzle
This on this comes out SL low so it looks like I’m adding a ton of olive oil but I’m not I don’t know maybe about a tablespoon or so and add a little bit of this wish I had the other one I don’t let me just check one more
Time I’m not going into the basement to pull it from there while doing this live so all right that’s okay it tastes the same it’s just that I have a better idea of quantity of how much to use so that’s why the hesitation so I’m just little is best for this
Um because you can always add more you can’t take it out so I add a little drizzle and mix it up make sure you can see everything the other day I had a rot container smack dab in the camera yeah so smart okay this is going really good um if you
Want to add some black pepper if you want to add a little bit of salt you can do that I’m not um leave it up especially if you’re like giving this to somebody to serve or you’re at a table leave extra olive oil and um the vinegar there because people
Have different tastes and I do not like a lot of vinegar it doesn’t do well for me my husband on the other hand is exact opposite he likes less olive oil more vinegar again totally opposite so everybody’s different you do have to test it make
Sure um that it’s good um and that you have the quantities in the herbs I don’t think I’m missing anything mhm yeah that’s really good I think I’m going to put a little bit more camada olives in it so me that I don’t rinse the olives um I
Used to do that I I tried that a few times and to be honest with you it took off so much of the um saltiness of them from the brine um and from the curing that they do that to me it removed a lot of that classic Olive flavor so
Okay this is good um you know another thing you can do too in here um and I didn’t think of it um but you can if you have a rugula and you want a little bit of that peppery flavor um add it in chop it up add it
In uh and I think I’m good I’m really happy with this might add in a little bit more um gosh I don’t have much left I should just use it the artti of chokes again uh really don’t care for the marinated flavors because you just don’t know every the different
Manufacturers they just have so I’m gonna use this up um they have crazy herbs sometimes and if that’s your if that’s your thing and you like it fantastic do it make it make it the way that tastes good to you okay yay this is delicious I can’t wait to give this to them
Um isn’t that like so much the joy of cooking and Italian for me Italian cooking I can’t stand any other type of cooking G can’t stand it if it has to do with Italian food I’m there you want to talk about any other type of Cuisine I
Couldn’t care less you want to start a conversation that could last for hours let’s talk about Italian food always learning always learning um and benefiting from the knowledge and experience of others that’s my goal here today is to help you that’s why I’m doing this live I don’t
Want to keep this re recipe to myself it’s delicious like share it it’s the joy of sharing and giving so I hope that you benefited from this um I hope you really try it let me know um I do have the recipe on my website I need to tweak
It with some measurements and stuff it’s changed over the years I’ll put the link in the description as soon as I get to it probably in the next 24 48 Hours um and this is going to just marinate overnight use it enjoy it share it um I
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