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I'm following a recipe that calls for 200g of dried chickpeas, soaked overnight. I have two 28 fl. oz. (796 ml) cans of chick peas, packed in water.

This is made complicated by two things:

  1. You can't easily convert a weight measurement to a volume measurement. (What is the density of a chickpea?)
  2. The recipe wants me to measure dry chickpeas, and I have canned chickpeas. (How much of the weight is water?)

How much of my canned chickpeas should I use?

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I assume the recipe is actually cooking the chickpeas (garbanzo beans) fully (a time consuming process, eg. hours)? Some recipes, like falafel, sometimes require uncooked chickpeas. –  Orbling Mar 7 '11 at 1:01

2 Answers 2

up vote 8 down vote accepted

There is no exact conversion because there are so many different varieties of chickpeas or any bean types for that matter

Their water absorption rate and amount is effected by many things including how they have been stored, have they been heat treated on import, and what time of year they where grown!

My rough rule of thumb for beans in general is 2.5 ±.5 times the volume and 2 ±.5 the weight after an overnight soak

With our local chickpeas it's 2.2 times the weight after 10 hours at 20°C (on the bench)

200g should be around 440g of soaked chickpeas. 1 cup of chickpeas is around 240g, so just shy of two cups of soaked chickpeas should do it

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The USDA guidelines for canning dried peas or beans gives the rule of thumb that 12 ounces of dried peas/beans produces 1 quart (32 fluid ounces) of canned product. That's a ratio of 3 oz dry per 8 fl oz cooked. They don't specifically mention chickpeas in the document, but the same ratio appears in other places, here for example.

At that ratio, 7.05 oz (200 g) of dried chickpeas would produce 18.8 fl oz. A 28 fl oz can of cooked chickpeas would represent about 10.5 oz of dried chickpeas.

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