7 Canned Chickpea Brands To Buy And 7 To Avoid

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A can of chickpeas — also called garbanzo beans — might seem like a simple item, but in fact, it can be a secret culinary weapon. Hungry for a salty snack but fresh out of chips? Eat your legumes with olive oil, salt, and spices, spread them on a baking sheet, and roast them until they've reached crispy perfection. Looking to give your salad a bit more heft? Sprinkle these beige beauties atop your cucumbers and spinach and make it into a hearty meal. Need something to wow your party guests? With a can of chickpeas, a blender, tahini, lemon juice, and your choice of seasonings, you can easily whip up a delicious, creamy homemade hummus recipe. No wonder chickpeas are a beloved ingredient all over the world — and canning makes them easier to use than ever. 

But not all canned chickpeas are created equal. Some brands take on the pantry staple are delicious, fresh, and well-textured, but others offer only slimy piles of congealed chickpea rubble. Moreover, with chickpeas having reached new heights of popularity, there are more options to choose from than ever before. How's a home cook supposed to know which brands to trust? Not to worry — help is on the way. We're here to take a look at the canned chickpea brands you should spend your hard-earned dollars on and the brands you should avoid at all costs.

The fact that Trader Joe's canned chickpeas disappoint is surprising, given their delicious souped-up Greek chickpeas. The two offerings shouldn't taste as different as they do: The latter product is just plain old canned chickpeas with some spices, lemon juice, and soybean oil thrown in. But the gulf between them is, somehow, enormous. Trader Joe's non-Greek canned chickpeas almost taste like a different legume altogether.

The biggest problem with these glum garbanzos is texture. When you first pop them into your mouth, you might not notice the issue. These chickpeas appear to be firm, distinctly shaped, and largely intact, no matter how much the can might have rolled around in the back of your pantry. But then you bite down, and the problem becomes all too clear. Though they're firm on the outside, these chickpeas have positively mushy interiors. All too soon, your mouth will be filled with an undifferentiated chickpea paste. This makes for disappointing salads, uneven roasting, and unpleasantly watery hummus. Taste-wise, they're not terrible, but the texture issue is simply too big to ignore. Stick to Trader Joe's Greek chickpeas and leave the plain version on the shelf.

Good beans should taste, well, like beans. This is a surprisingly difficult flavor to describe: It's rich, savory, sweet, and delicate, all at the same time. What's not difficult, however, is describing what they shouldn't taste like. Beans shouldn't taste metallic, soapy, fermented, or grassy. Sadly, too many of these words describe Happy Belly's canned chickpeas. Review after review points out this unpleasant flavor. 

One Amazon reviewer hit the nail on the head when they said, "I don't know how to explain it really. If you've ever made dried beans, the taste is similar to if you left it out to soak for too long and it got that weird fermented/almost sprouted bean taste?" This odd taste isn't the only problem with these chickpeas, either: Each can is also disappointingly watery. Another reviewer noted, "After draining the liquid the can was only about ⅔ full of garbanzos, considerably fewer than competitors." Is this the product of oversight, or a ruthless cost-cutting measure? We're not sure, but we do know that skimpy cans of soapy chickpeas aren't worth anyone's hard-earned dollars.

S&W's canned chickpeas are a profoundly mixed bag. Texturally, they're pretty solid: The beans are firm and well-shaped, though not as distinctly as any of our buy picks, yet remain creamy enough to blend into hummus. They're also decidedly tasty. These chickpeas are among the most savory on this list. When eating these legumes, you might not pick up on their subtle sweetness. Those who enjoy that delicate flavor will be disappointed, but eaters in search of the most umami-rich garbanzo bean out there might be intrigued. These are chickpeas that want to complement a hearty dinner or even stand in for something like ground beef.

You might be thinking, at this point, that S&W chickpeas could be a great choice for your vegetarian chili. But here's the thing: That savory quality comes from a whole lot of salt. Each serving boasts a whopping 420 milligrams of sodium. S&W does offer a low-sodium option, but the flavor is incredibly bland — there's no reason to opt for it when superior choices, like Goya or Westbrae Natural's low-salt chickpeas, are available. Even if you don't have to follow a low-salt diet, S&W's chickpeas still aren't a great choice. After the first few bites, the chickpeas' actual flavor becomes hard to discern amongst all that sodium. The first few bites are solid, but the rest are just frustrating.

Chickpeas are mildly flavored, which makes them a great choice for spice-laden dishes like chana masala and pasta e ceci. But you shouldn't mistake such mildness for blandness. When eaten on their own, chickpeas should taste earthy, fresh, vegetal, and faintly sweet. The best canned chickpea brands preserve this complex and subtle interplay of tastes, while the worst smother it in salt. So it goes with Bush's canned chickpeas, which rival the Dead Sea in terms of sheer, shocking salinity.

How salty are we talking about here, exactly? Let's make it plain: Every serving of Bush's canned chickpeas contains a staggering 480 milligrams of sodium. That puts it among the most salt-drenched chickpeas on this entire list. The legumes' actual flavor is completely buried beneath this sodium avalanche. All you can taste is salt, and nothing else makes up for this, either — these chickpeas are no great shakes in terms of texture or ability to absorb seasoning. Even those with a robust salt tooth will find themselves severely tested by these beans.

Great Value's chickpeas get a few things right. Nutritionally, they're impressively balanced, containing lots of fiber and only a moderate amount of sodium. They're also incredibly budget-friendly. But this last quality might be a flaw in disguise — these chickpeas taste seriously and disastrously cheap. Somehow, they're simultaneously bland and gross: There's a lack of real chickpea flavor, and an abundance of something unpleasantly funky. The taste is metallic — which we're chalking up to the can — stale, and musty, like they've been sitting in a damp basement for a long stretch of time. A long cooking period that incorporates a range of pungent spices and some brightening squirts of citrus might disguise this, but why go to the trouble when there are so many better options available?

These chickpeas are also frustrating when it comes to texture. They're oddly hard, rough, and dry, as though they were plucked from their pods too early. Simmering might ameliorate this problem, but it's so pronounced that we're not convinced it'd solve it. Chewing them is kind of like gnawing on birdshot or gravel. And really, not many people are longing for that culinary experience.

Good & Gather's chickpeas are a frustrating patchwork of quality. On the one hand, they taste pretty darn good — rich, a little nutty, and very slightly sweet. This makes them a solid choice for chickpea-forward dishes like hummus. So why are they on the avoid side of our list? It's all down to texture. First off, Good & Gather's chickpeas tend to arrive a little worse for the wear. Compared to other brands, there's a lot more damage done to each individual chickpea: Crumbling is common, fine details are often worn away, and the chickpeas at the bottom of the can tend to get flattened. 

Recent cans also seem to skimp on the amount of chickpeas — as one online Target reviewer noted, "As soon as I opened the can, I knew something was off. The chickpeas were only about halfway up the can, rather than 3/4 or mostly full like these cans used to be." We can't be sure, but this roominess seems likely to be the source of these can's damaged chickpeas. 

What's worse, this isn't the only textural issue. You'd think these chickpeas would be overly soft, given the issues with crumbliness, but in fact, they're on the unpleasantly hard side of things. Many cans taste like they haven't been cooked all the way through, which completely eliminates the convenience canned foods are meant to offer. The effect is of eating rubble, which pretty much nobody wants from their chickpeas.

Most of the worst chickpeas on this list are obviously offensive. They're too soft, too hard, smell off, or taste musty. In contrast, O Organics' canned chickpeas seem pretty okay. They don't give off any sort of unappealing odor, don't arrive as a congealed mass, and don't go overboard on the salt. But avoiding such pitfalls doesn't equal success — a can of chickpeas needs to actively excel at something to earn a spot on the "buy" side of our list. O Organics' chickpeas simply do not do that. In fact, they don't do much of anything besides exist.

It's hard to describe the taste of these chickpeas, as there really isn't much taste to speak of. After a few spoonfuls, you can detect a very faint earthiness, and a hint of salt. It's not unpleasant, but it's barely there. This makes these chickpeas an awful choice for classic dishes like hummus, which depend on bold chickpea flavor. Texturally, the situation is similar: They're soft enough that they lack the pleasant firmness of better chickpeas, and yet they're also hard enough to resist a pleasant creaminess.