Once you’ve tried this Warm Butternut Chickpea Salad, you will want to enjoy it over and over. This scrumptious, nourishing salad will become your easy dinner staple. If you’ve never tried butternut squash with garbanzo beans before, the perfection of their marriage will impress you. Butternut adds a beautiful hint of sweetness to chickpeas. In their turn, chickpeas add more substance and a pleasant crunch. Both of these healthy vegetables love curry, and everyone knows that cinnamon makes the best of any winter squash. The most splendid aspect of this dish is that it contains just three ingredients (butternut squash, chickpeas and olive oil) and two common spices (curry powder and cinnamon). Feel free to add greens, like cilantro or parsley, to make this dish even more nutritious.
As you will note below, the recipe asks you to dice butternut squash quite finely, in half inch cubes. To accomplish that, we used Breville Sous Chef Peel & Dice Countertop Food Processor. I strongly recommend this food processor for anyone who prepares meals at home, and enjoys cooking and eating vegetables!
Note also that we start with dry chickpeas, and for this reason the cooking time looks longer than it would have been otherwise. If you use canned chickpeas, your total cooking time will be just 50 minutes, including passive cooking time.
Nonetheless, I prefer the richer taste of freshly cooked chickpeas. Unlike the dry variety, canned chickpeas contain sodium. See a FoodNetwork article discussing health benefits of chickpeas. They also have fewer nutrients and an inferior taste. See a Livestrong article discussing disadvantages of canned chickpeas.
Lastly, the inspiration to marry butternut squash and chickpeas came from Food & Wine’s recipe by Melissa Rubel. The proportions and spices are all mine.
Vegan • Low glycemic • Flavorful • Easy • Nutrient-dense • Sugar-free • Delicious