Give Your Roasted Chickpeas A Flavor Boost With One Staple Ingredient

Plant-based foodies and omnivores alike turn to canned chickpeas for an affordable high-protein food. To nearly double the protein factor and elevate your roasted beans with rich umami flavor, it's time to break out the nutritional yeast. If you've never tried it before, nutritional yeast is made from the same type of yeast used to make bread and brew beer. In rising bread, that saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast is alive; nooch gets heated, pasteurized, and dried, thereby deactivating the yeast. The seasoning's characteristic ultra-savory depth comes from glutamic acid, which is naturally released when the yeast becomes inactive.

To make this little powerhouse even more impressive, all it takes to cook with nutritional yeast is to sprinkle it over your go-to recipes. Nooch comes in airy flakes, not unlike the appearance of fish food, but with a cheesy, nutty, savory flavor that's fat-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, and vegan. Nutritional yeast works best when incorporated with some sort of moisture or fat component, which functions as a binding agent.

To make it work for your chickpeas, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil will help those nooch flakes adhere to the surface of the beans. About one tablespoon of EVOO per can of drained chickpeas should do the trick. Simply add the chickpeas, olive oil, and nooch to a large mixing bowl and toss to coat, then roast until crispy.

To roast, roughly 20 to 30 minutes in the oven at 425 degrees Fahrenheit should do the trick. Alternatively, you could skip the preheat with our crispy chickpeas recipe, which utilizes the skillet instead of the oven. Over medium-high heat, those seasoned garbanzos takes about 10 minutes to crisp up. In an airtight container in the fridge, they'll keep for three to four days.

Beyond functioning as a delicious seasoning, nooch is a powerful tool for enhancing your recipes on the gourmand as well as the utilitarian side. Well-known nutritional yeast brand Bragg boasts five grams of complete protein per tablespoon, plus all nine essential amino acids. Considering a half cup of chickpeas packs six to eight grams of protein, seasoning with nooch nearly doubles the overall protein content of your roasted chickpea dish. Pro tip: If you buy nutritional yeast in a sturdy plastic shaker container once, you can refill the shaker with bulk bags of nutritional yeast for easy dispensing, lower cost, and reduced plastic waste.

Crispy chickpeas are great on their own for snacking, but you could also use your nooch-roasted chickpeas as a meatless, protein-forward salad topping. They'd also work wonders to bulk up a warm grain bowl or pasta dish. It doesn't have to stop at nutritional yeast, either. Feel free to sprinkle on other complementary savory seasonings like smoked paprika, dried oregano, garlic powder, onion powder, or Old Bay.