I get ideas all the time for new GardenFork videos, but I’d like to hear from you guys what you’d like to see. I have a list of show ideas in my Evernote file, but some of the best ones come from you guys. Like the video we did on garden hose repair!
I’d appreciate you taking the time to post below your suggestions and thoughts, i’d appreciate it. Thanks, eric.
Broken Garden Hose? Learn how to fix your leaking garden hose in this Fix a broken hose video. We’ve run over the garden hose with a lawnmower a few times, and instead of throwing out the hose, we fix the leak in the hose, or the cut off end of the hose with a few repair parts from the hardware store. A few things to keep in mind with garden hose repair, don’t buy cheap repair parts or hose washers, you get what you pay for in most of the world , and this applies in the garden hose fix it department too.
Rubber or flexible washers go between your hose and the spray attachments, and keep the water from leaking out the hose. You might try buying a few different kinds of hose washers, as i’ve found some garden hose attachments don’t work with the thicker hose washers. And buy a bunch of them, you’ll save yourself time later when you need them. Hang them near the hose storage hooks or on the wall of your workshop so you can find them quickly. Put them in a drawer and they are lost.
I’ve found a number of hoses in the neighbor’s trash that were easily fixed with a garden hose repair kit, and I saved a bunch of money and kept a fine watering hose out of the landfill.
What do you do to repair your hoses? let us know below:
Well, I’m still working my way through that big jar of tamarind paste and really enjoying the journey. A dish that’s a hit in my household is one I’ve been making for a couple years now and was inspired by the overabundance of poblano peppers we had at the farm. We always had a surplus, in part because they are easy to grow organically but also because it seems like people don’t really know what to do with them. If you’ve never had poblano peppers before, I urge you to give them a try. They are considered a hot pepper but have a mild, pleasant heat that pairs beautifully with eggs, and they’re a great fit for stuffing.
This recipe is one that originally began by following Pham Fatale’s mirchi ka salan recipe but that I’ve adapted and simplified over time, so much that I’m avoiding calling this mirchi ka salan for fear of being called out by an Indian food expert. It may not be authentic, but it’s loaded with the flavors of Indian spices. Speaking of which, don’t let the long ingredient list deter you from giving it a try – I’ll bet you have some jars of spices just waiting to be put to good use.
We usually eat this Indian poblano dish over plain rice but sometimes switch it up by adding boiled, cubed potatoes to the sauce instead.
Spicy Indian Poblano Peppers
Ingredients
• 1 tbsp tamarind paste
• 1 tbsp honey
• 3/4 c water, divided use
• coconut oil (or neutral oil)
• 1 large onion, roughly chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• large pinch of salt
• 2-inch piece of ginger, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 tsp cumin seed
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1-2 tsp chili pepper flakes (or omit, depending on your heat preference)
• 2 tsp garam masala
• 8 poblano peppers, chopped into bite-size pieces
• 1/2 c peanuts, finely ground in a food processor or spice grinder
• 1/2 c shredded coconut
• 1/2 c plain yogurt
Cooking Directions
1. In a small bowl, mix together the tamarind paste, honey, and ¼ c of the water. Set aside.
2. Place a large pan over medium-high heat and add enough oil to coat the bottom. Add the onion, garlic, salt, and spices and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft and translucent, about 5 minutes.
3. Add the peppers and cook another 5 minutes, or until they are just tender. If at any point things are looking too dry, add a tablespoon or two of water or oil.
4. Add the peanuts, coconut, and remaining ½ c water, reduce heat to medium-low, and let simmer for 5-10 minutes or until the mixture is a thick, cohesive sauce.
5. Stir in the tamarind-honey mixture and cook another minute.
6. Remove from heat and stir in the yogurt.
This is another of a series of articles about how to cook in a dutch oven, dutch oven recipes, and how to season cast iron and dutch ovens by Gary House, of Cooking-Outdoors.com. A big thank-you to Gary for contributing this.
The key to successful outdoor Dutch oven cooking, is knowing how many charcoal briquettes are required to produce a certain temperature inside of your Dutch oven while it is cooking.
The secret to this knowledge is understanding charcoal briquettes.
Types of charcoal
Charcoal briquettes produce more uniform heat than campfire coals or Lump charcoal, making your Dutch oven temperature easier to control. Brand-name briquettes have more consistent quality than bargain brands. They are consistent in size— about 2 inches square — which is important for predictable heat. Start with charcoal briquettes if you just beginning and experiment with live campfire coals as you progress.
How many briquettes do you need?
This is the basic foundation of Dutch oven cooking, once you know this, everything else falls into place. Take your Dutch oven’s diameter in inches and double it.
• 8 inch Dutch oven = 16 briquettes
• 10 inch = 20 briquettes
• 12 inch = 24 briquettes
• And so on.
The total calculation is the number of standard-size charcoal briquettes you will need to heat your Dutch oven to approximately 325 degrees F for one hour.
It is that simple.
Controlling temperature
Most Dutch oven beginners are familiar with cooking on a stove at home, cooking with bottom heat only and that can cause confusion when cooking outdoors with a Dutch oven.
Because heat rises, briquettes heat the bottom of a Dutch oven more quickly and directly than the top. The top rim of the lid draws the heat downwards, you will need to divide your briquettes between the top and bottom for even heating. Commonly referred to as the three up method and is effective on 8, 10 and 12-inch diameter Dutch ovens; larger size Dutch ovens may require more briquettes.
As an example:
• To heat an 8-inch Dutch oven to 325 degrees, you need 5 coals on the bottom and 11 coals on top. Sixteen coals total.
• To heat a 10-inch oven, you need 7 briquettes on the bottom and 13 on top. Twenty coals total.
• To heat a 12-incher, you need 9 briquettes on the bottom and 15 on top. Twenty-four coals total.
These guidelines will get you close enough that, with practice, you can understand exactly what works for your Dutch oven.
Briquette placement
Using the circle method of coal placement, place your bottom coals in a single circle aligned with the legs of your Dutch oven closer to the outside of the Dutch oven bottom, referencing the lip of the Dutch oven lid place your coals evenly around the perimeter.
Variables
If your recipe calls for temperatures higher or lower than 325 degrees, make adjustments by adding or subtracting 2 briquettes. Two briquettes equal approximately 25 degrees. Add these to the top of the Dutch oven, unless you need more heat on the bottom.
How long do briquettes last?
Today’s charcoal briquettes last about 45 – 50 minutes. When recipes call for longer cooking times, start fresh replacement briquettes at 40 minutes. They will be ready to add to your Dutch oven when the original coals start losing their heat. Replace approximately 60% of the coals each 45 – 50 minutes of cook time.
Compensation for weather conditions will be required. On cold days, add a couple of more coals on the top and on a hot day remove a coal or two. Wind will play a significant roll in temperature control, it is best to shelter your Dutch oven from the wind with a windscreen if possible.
Following these basic concepts will insure your first adventures in Dutch oven cooking are a success. After practicing a few recipes, temperature control will become second nature and you will no longer need to count as you become more proficient.
Here is one of my favorite beginner recipes, the same one I use in my Dutch oven classes.
Blackberry Cobbler
Ingredients
For the cake mix:
1 stick butter
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 tbs baking powder
1tsp salt
1 1/2 cups milk
For the berries:
4 cups fresh or frozen blackberries or 2 bags frozen (thawed)
½ cup sugar
1 ½ tsp fresh grated lemon zest
¼ cup water
1 tsp cinnamon
10 or 12” Dutch oven (20 or 24 briquettes)
Start your briquettes using the formula above to determine the quantity.
Rinse your fresh blackberries and drain, place them in a bowl with your sugar, lemon zest, water and cinnamon; mix well and set aside.
When your briquettes are ready, place the bottom circle of briquettes down and set your Dutch oven with the lid on top of the briquettes, then add the remaining briquettes to the lid to pre-heat your Dutch oven.
Now you can mix your cobbler batter. In separate bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt; stir to mix. Add milk and beat until batter is smooth.
Remove the Dutch oven lid, take one stick of butter and place in hot Dutch oven, stir until melted. Add your Blackberry mixture to the melted butter and pour your cobbler batter over the top
(A different variation of this would be to take your batter and pour that in first place your blackberries on top.)
Replace the lid and bake for 45 minutes.
Serve with vanilla Ice cream and enjoy!
Bitten by the urban foraging bug, I’m always looking at plants and trees in New York City now. There’s lots of food around if you look. On the way to the subway in Park Slope is a Horse Chestnut Tree, and every year the sidewalk is littered with the empty chestnut shells – the squirrels have gotten most of the nuts.
The nuts are called conkers, which were used to play a game in the UK called conkers as well. The nuts are considered slightly poisonous, though deer eat them.
The beekeeper and tree nerd in me was wondering whether horse chestnuts were self pollinated or needed a second chestnut tree for pollination, and whether they were insect pollinated or wind pollinated. According to wikipedia the trees are pollinated by birds and insects, and I found a second horse chestnut tree around the corner from this tree. neat.
“Raw Horse Chestnut seed, leaf, bark and flower are toxic due to the presence of esculin and should not be ingested.” says Wikipedia. There are a number of medicinal uses for some of the compounds found in the Horse Chestnut conker, which doesn’t surprise me for this cool looking plant.
What interesting nut trees have you found in your area? Let us know below:
Pollen is the topic of this post. In this image you can see quite a bit of it in the comb. It is of various colors and what I’ve seen them bringing in, at least the day of this hive inspection, is yellow. In fact, if you look closely at this picture you’ll see a couple of bees with what looks like little yellow corn kernels on them. This yellow substance is pollen and it is held in the pollen baskets on their legs.
Bees, like humans, require protein to survive and pollen provides that protein. The honeybees mix this with some nectar and produce something we call “bee bread” which is fed to the larva. Without this source of protein, the bees won’t develop. Some beekeepers will provide “pollen patties” to their hives. This is a man-made substitute for pollen which they will, apparently, use like pollen. I have not had any experience with pollen patties at this point.
Pollen is a little bundle of cells covered in a protective coating. The cells include vegetative ones and also a couple of reproductive ones. Pollen is the sperm of the plant and is a necessary component for reproduction. Plants which utilize pollinators like honeybees produce pollen which sticks easily to these pollinators and is carried from the anther to the stigma, thus reproduction in the plant. That’s really the main reason plants have flowers – to reproduce.
Bees, flies and other pollinators live in symbiotic harmony with flowering plants. These plants produce lots of pollen and some of it gets moved from the anther to stigma, helping to ensure reproduction in the plant. The plant relies upon these pollinators. The plants, in return, provide the protein needed for the bee to reproduce.
Happy beekeeping,
Matt
Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here
Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) likes pickled cucumbers but not pickled beets. He thinks matrix math is cool. Matt wishes there were less lawyers and more scientists in the world. He knows there are some serious steering issues with Fred Flintstone’s car that nobody else seems to care about… oh yeah, folks… chuckle away at that stone-age humor. Haha very funny. Matt’s not amused by Hanna-Barbera’s lack of knowledge about vehicles and engineering, let alone physics.
We thank Matt Cuba for fixing the GardenFork site!
Rick and Eric talk about Halloween, moving apartments, boxes from old moves you’ve never opened.
Beekeeping overload has happened to Eric, with the realization that one can only eat so much honey. Rick talks about queenless hives.
What fun we had with Lynne Rossetto Kasper of The Splendid Table! we hope to have her back on to answer more of our questions.
The most recent foraging edible plant identification video about purslane is talked about, and upcoming show on sumac.
Wondering how to remove latex paint from the floor, check out this picture of what can go wrong, and then use windex to remove the paint.
photo by earl53
Here I’ve got a photo from my recent hive inspection of hive #2. As you can see, the bees don’t all look alike. Oh, sure they have wings and are about the same size but their coloration varies. Along the bottom of that frame in the middle you can see some very yellow-orange bodied honeybees and some that are black/dark gray and a dull grayish yellow. In fact there is quite a variety of coloration and banding on this frame.
Why is that?
Mostly this is due to genetic variation among these honeybees. The queen mates with many different drones and so there is almost certainly going to be a bit of a “melting pot” in the hive. Over in hive #1, I had an Italian honeybee queen and most of the initial workers in that hive looked like Italian bees. But as the hive has grown, there has been a bit more variety in the bees in that hive, but certainly not as much as in hive #2, which my beekeeping mentor, Lindi, called “mutt bees” – I suspect the queen in that hive is some cross. Mix the genes of this queen with a variety of drones and the genetic diversity increases.
Genetic diversity in a hive is a good thing.
If all the bees in a hive were genetically identical – clones if you will – their particular genetic makeup might make them less hardy in adverse weather conditions, maybe it would make them more prone to succumbing to disease. You get the idea. The hive thrives by having a diverse population. The idea behind natural selection is that those traits which are advantageous for survival given the current situation will give the bees having those traits a leg up on those that don’t have those traits. So in a hive where the population is heterogenous, some might succumb to a disease or perhaps mites while others may be less inclined to be affected by that disease or the mite infestation. If the queen is one of those survivors or some of her drones are among those with superior genetics, the result will be that those traits will have an opportunity to be passed on via sperm and egg. The queen that doesn’t make it, or the drones that don’t make it won’t pass their traits along, of course.
This doesn’t, of course, mean that these honeybees are moving toward perfection… their population is just affected by their genetic makeup and the world around them. What affected population N and caused certain members of population N to die off might not affect population N+M. In fact, it is possible that population N+M might be affected by something to which those from population N that died were better suited to survive. Interesting, huh? Well, at least to me. The point is that the world is a dynamic place and selection doesn’t always mean improvement. When the conditions change, populations have to adapt or they won’t survive. Genetic diversity provides better odds that the population will survive.
Happy beekeeping,
Matt
Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here
Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) would like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony but he’d be happy if the folks that can’t carry a tune would just hush it already. Seriously folks, you’re killing him with your off-key renditions of “Call Me Maybe”. Matt loves to play backgammon, go, and chess. He stinks at two of the three of those – guess which? His favorite Partridge was Laurie, of course.
Propolis – that sticky, gooey substance that honeybees make from plant resins – is strong stuff. Anyone who has tried to separate one super from the one below it can testify to the holding power of propolis. As I’ve written before, bees use this to fill in small cracks and seal up anything needing to be sealed up.
Apparently, they needed to seal this frame in its box very well. Between a bunch of burr comb and an abundance of propolis, this frame simply would not come out. As you can see, the nails and glue failed before the propolis did. I honestly didn’t expect that to be the case. I was very careful when building these frames and if you look closely, you can see that some wood tore away on this frame… maybe it was just weak wood.
I two-tooled the frame out after pushing my hive tools down between the frames a couple of times. I’ll probably swap that out in the spring and I tapped it back together and noted which one it is.
Happy beekeeping,
Matt
Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here
Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) doesn’t like those cutesy flower-topped pens that businesses use to discourage folks from taking them. He doesn’t understand why people like eating liver at all. There are much better things to eat in life. His favorite stooge is Moe because he is grumpy and has a smart looking haircut. Just kidding… he’s not that grumpy. Matt is one of the nine people in North America that listened to AM radio last week. If you haven’t listened to AM in awhile… it hasn’t improved.
Ominous sounding name, huh?
This little sucker (literally) is one of the many pests which can affect the health and well being of a hive. Varoa is a mite which latches onto the honeybee and sucks the hemolymph from the bee. You can think of hemolymph as being like our own blood though it doesn’t serve exactly the same purpose in the bee as blood does in humans. For one thing, bees don’t need to have oxygen circulated throughout their bodies because they respirate (breathe) directly through the spiracles on their sides. Another type of mite, the tracheal mite, sets up home inside the bee’s trachea and block the airways. You can’t see those with your naked eye.
There’s a Varoa mite prominently displayed right in the center of the picture behind that center bee’s eyes. If you closely under the left wing of the second bee from the left on the bottom, you can see another Varoa mite. Without my reading glasses (yes, I’m getting old and my eyesight stinks) I can’t see these mites, so I generally need to rely upon examining the pictures I take when inspecting my hive. I saw other Varoa mites in other pictures but not a lot of them. I will be treating for these in the next week using powdered sugar. Essentially you dust the bees with it and it helps to dislodge some of the mites as part of the process. The bees don’t mind the powered sugar but it does actually result in some of the mites falling off.
Varoa reduces the life of a honeybee and so it is important to treat for these pests to keep them in check. Hives will have them – in fact most every hive is going to have Varoa mites. But the presence of these mites doesn’t mean that your hive is doomed. A simple method for checking them is to treat with powered sugar and stick a slide-in card in your screened bottom board. The mites will fall off – at least many will – and you can count them to gauge how your hive is doing. It would be nearly impossible to prevent Varoa since bees don’t live in a closed system – they are out and about and likely to pick up Varoa and bring it back to the hive. Our job as beekeepers is to treat for and keep account of the Varoa population rather than attempt to eliminate them – that’s not going to happen. Varoa poses no direct threat to humans or animals as far as I know. It doesn’t affect the honey either. It is simply a pest that affects the life of the bee directly.
Happy beekeeping,
Matt
Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here
Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) is not a fan of seersucker suits, NASCAR or zydeco music. He prefers sausage over bacon and bacon over Canadian bacon. His favorite pizza topping is black olives, at least today. Matt thinks right now is a great time for a nap.
“Eric come here quick!”
Not the phrase you want to hear on a paint job.
It doesn’t happen often, but this is what you prepare for, the unexpected. The one time you don’t prepare is when it will happen.
When painting rooms, I am obsessive about covering every square inch of floor with either paint tarps or red rosin contractor paper. It pays off in a number of ways, we spend almost no time cleaning paint roller splatter off the floor, any plaster or sheetrock repair dust is easily cleaned up, and if one of us happens to step into a drop of paint that has happened onto a tarp, we don’t get even more paint on the floor from walking all over with paint on our shoes. The tarps soak up the paint from the sole of the shoe.
Painting a brownstone last week one of the crew accidentally kicked over a gallon of paint, but because we had laid down heavy duty muslin paint tarps, the clean up was easy.
We first scoop up as much paint as we can and put it back into a paint can. You might need to strain that paint if it has sanding debris in it picked up from the tarp. We roll the tarp up into itself and take it outside. We then sop up the rest with paper towels, and lay out the tarp to dry. Latex paint will dry slowly when its thick, but after it dries, you can use the tarp again.
If you are painting more than one room, consider buying muslin tarps instead of plastic tarps. Plastic is slippery to walk on, muslin paint tarps are much better and last for years. Be sure to write your name on your tarps, your friends will borrow them, and its a subtle way of reminding your friends whose tarps they are.
What are your paint catastrophes? tell us below
Sarah and I were having a production meeting the other day and we were talking about cool people we’d like to have on the show. Sarah immediately suggested Lynne Rossetto Kasper, award winning author and host the The Splendid Table radio show from American Public Radio.
I listen to Lynne’s show in the car, driving between NYC and CT. I especially like the part of the show where people call and list what they have in their fridge and Lynne comes up with a meal using those ingredients. neat.
Sarah and I both had a question to ask Lynne, Sarah’s dealt with working toward a career in the food world and mine was not nearly as interesting, it was how to cook from your fridge. And Lynne told us of how she first worked with Julia Child in a cooking demo at the A&S Store in Brooklyn, right near where both Sarah and I live.
I was a bit tongue tied at the beginning of the show, but I got better as we started talking. Lynne is a real pro at radio, she made it easy for us. We hope she’ll be back on GF Radio in a bit and we can talk more about cooking and food.
A big thank you to American Public Media for helping us arrange the call.
Lynne’s newest book is A Summertime Grilling Guide written with Sally Swift. below are links to Lynne’s books.
Deek Diedricksen, Tiny House Designer and originator of the plywood boat we built joins us to catch up on what he is doing. Deek is hosting a Tiny House Building Workshop Nov 1 & 2. His newest book is in a new printing, check it out on his site.
Priscilla the egg lady joins us to talk about how to grow swiss chard and how to cook swiss chard. Priscilla is using a double row method this year.
Josh Bauer then joins us to talk about what’s it like to go to the Culinary Institute of America and then start your own farm in Florida. You can check out Josh’s farm at his website here.
photo by tangle_eye
This year has been the year I’ve had to requeen 4 hives. Not sure why, but wanted to show one way how to requeen a beehive. This beehive was doing fine, I pulled some honey off the hive, and then checking it 3 weeks later there is barely any covered brood and no freshly laid eggs anywhere in the hive. You can see here in the first picture of the beehive, this frame is from the lower super, where there is usually brood, there aren’t any eggs on this frame. Luckily, I have a few other robust hives, and was able to get a queen from a nearby beekeeper.
Queens will slow down their egg laying in the fall, so you have to make sure the hive really is queenless, check most or all of the frames for brood.
Requeening this hive, I had to keep in mind its getting late in the year, and these bees will need a good population to get through the winter. I pulled two frames full of brood from a nearby healthy hive, knocked off most of the bees from those frames back into their hive, and got ready to open the queenless hive.
From the queenless hive, I took off the upper supers and then pulled two empty brood frames from the bottom super. I then put in the queenless hive the two frames of capped brood from the healthy donor hive, and then wedged in between those two frames the new queen in a queen cage.
The capped brood will hatch soon, and will help boost the population of the hive while the queen gets acclimated and starts laying. I think this hive will make it through the winter, we still have a few months to get it back in shape.
I feed all our hives a 2:1 sugar syrup solution with an essential oil mix added in ( get the honeybee essential oil recipe here ), with this hive i may start early on the feeding.
Here are some beekeeping books I recommend:
What has your experience been with requeening? Let us know below:
What are the best flowers for honeybees? What kind of flowers do bees like? How do i attract honeybees to my garden?
Being a beekeeper, I pay a lot of attention to what flowers honeybees are attracted to, and in the late summer and fall, the forest edges of my yard are full of Woodland Asters, and these flowers are full of honeybees. Woodland Asters bloom late, and keep their flowers quite a while into the cold days of fall. They are an edge of forest plant, they wont grow in direct sun, and are inconspicuous before they bloom, then all of a sudden, they are there in front of you. Full of honeybees too. Asters are one of the best plants for honeybees in the fall.
The flower world calls these White Wood Asters, my neighbors call them Woodland Asters, the experts call them Eurybia divaricata, which is a mouthful. The name Aster comes from Greece, meaning ‘star’. The name fits the flowers, these have white petals that shoot straight out with a yellow center. This particular aster is considered threatened in Canada, but it grows in pockets around my area. According to Wikipedia, it is common in the Appalachian Mountains.
Project Native, a cool group up in Massachusetts, sells several seed mixes that have different native asters, I’m thinking most of the asters are honeybee attractant plants – flowers.
If you have asters in your yard, but don’t see honeybees on them, just wait. Honeybees focus on a particular plant for a while, then move on to the next plant species that is ready for them. The honeybees in your area may be working another kind of flower, like Goldenrod, and when they are done with that, they’ll move on to the asters. Honeybees don’t hop from one aster to another goldenrod, they focus on one flower type, then shift to new plants.
What flowers do you see honeybees on in your yard? Let us know below:
Learn how to forage for edible wild greens and identify edible plants in this Foraging for Purslane video. Edible plants like Purslane are sometimes considered weeds, but you can eat them, watch and learn here in this GardenFork foraging video.
Purslane grows all over the place, ( it grows well in compacted and dry soils ) so all you urban homesteaders rejoice, here’s a free salad green that grows like a weed. Purslane is considered a succulent, it kinda looks like the leaves of a jade plant, that whole family of plants. We have purslane volunteering in our garden, so if I run across it, I usually just let it grow and harvest it before it takes over whatever plants are next to it.
From the Purslane Wikipedia entry, I learned a lot about purslane. Purslane is eaten all over the world, just not here in the states. The leaves and stem are edible, not sure about the taproot. It is eaten raw and cooked, and it has a ‘mucilangious quality’ it is also cooked into soups and stews and can thicken dishes.
Greeks fry the leaves with sage, in Turkey it is cooked like spinach, and again, here, we pull it out as a weed.
What I found cool is that it has high levels of Omega 3 fatty acids, which few plants have. One usually has to eat fish to get high omega 3 levels. This edible wild green also has antioxidant properties.
Do you eat purslane? what is your favorite wild edible green?
Mike recently tweeted a challenge: Come up with a snack that would fix his crunchy-sweet-salty craving without going overboard on calories. When Monica suggested roasted chickpeas, I also got a hankering in need of quenching. So, I set out to recreate a recipe I used to make often. Why had I stopped? Well, somehow this particular snack slipped out of rotation, I guess. I’m always experimenting and there’s just not enough time (or room in my stomach) for all things tasty. Thanks Mike and Monica for resurrecting this treat back into my life!
Some tips for roasting chickpeas:
Sweet and Salty Roasted Chickpeas
Ingredients
• 2 c cooked chickpeas
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1/2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tbsp kosher or sea salt
Cooking Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Toss the chickpeas with the brown sugar and olive oil and spread in a single layer on a baking sheet or in a baking dish.
2. Roast the chickpeas for 30-40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes or so, until golden brown and caramelized. Don’t be afraid to let them go “just a little longer”! Toss with the salt while hot.
