Name: Curried Chickpea Salad from the Pot
Yield: 4

Nothing beats this Curried Chickpea Salad, complete with curry-seasoned chickpeas, a myriad of veggies, and the best dressing. This salad can be ready in 15 minutes or less and is satisfying on its own and divine in some pita with lettuce.

home cooks enjoy a good chickpea salad! Try some of our other favorites: Chickpea Salad, Greek Couscous Salad, or this Italian Couscous Salad.

This Curried Chickpea Salad is part of our Back-To-School Lifesavers — a series of recipes that are intended to have little (or no) veggie chopping, minimal prep time, around 10 ingredients, or less (not including pantry staples), and use kid-friendly ingredients. Click here to see all the recipes in the series!

Curried Chickpea Salad

It’s no secret we’re obsessed with using chickpeas as a sandwich filling — in fact, there are tons of fun flavor variations on this site:

Vegetarian Tuna Salad — tastes like tuna salad, but made with chickpeas
Chickpea Salad Sandwich — with fresh veggies and herbs
Pesto Chickpea Sandwiches — with sliced almonds and sun-dried tomatoes
Buffalo Chickpea Salad — with a creamy Buffalo sauce

Curry Chickpea Salad Ingredients

Chickpeas: also called garbanzo beans — they’re one and the same! See “quick tip” below.
Celery: To save time, pick already-washed celery stalks.
Red onion: A shallot or green onions can be used here instead.
Parsley: Make sure to get flat-leaf Italian parsley, as opposed to curly for this recipe. Flat-leaf parsley has a more robust flavor and curly parsley is used more commonly as a finish. Cilantro is a great substitute here, as well.

Quick Tip

Thoroughly rinse and drain the chickpeas. Wet or watery chickpeas will dilute the salad mixture and make it less flavorful. It is satisfying to using a salad spinner to completely dry the chickpeas before adding them to the food processor completely.

Process shots of Curried Chickpea Salad-- images of the chickpeas being added and pulsed together

Curried Chickpea Salad Dressing Ingredients

Mayo: Use good, creamy, full-fat mayonnaise. We recommend Hellman’s/Best Foods®.
Yellow curry powder: There is a lot of variation here, depending on the brand! Use a curry powder you know you enjoy with a heat level you can handle (we use McCormick®).
Honey: This helps set off heat from the curry while adding a nice balancing flavor
Lemon Juice: This delivers needed acid and vibrancy
Dijon: Make sure to use dijon, not yellow mustard here!

[variation] To make Curried Chickpea Salad Vegan, use vegan mayo! [/variation]

Chickpea Curry Salad Tips

Don’t over-pulse the chickpeas. We still want some coarse texture and for the chickpeas to be pretty chunky.
To keep this recipe as simple as possible, we throw everything in the food processor. Pulsing the veggies and chickpeas in a food processor takes mere seconds! If you don’t have a food processor, the veggies will need to be finely chopped and then a potato masher or even a fork can break and crush the chickpeas.

Serving Suggestions

Prepare a naan-wich or pita sandwich. Layer the chickpea filling on toasted naan or pita with ripe avocado, lettuce, and a few thinly sliced red onions.
Make a Curried Chickpea Salad sandwich by toasting some hearty wholegrain bread. Spread mayo on the bread slices and then layer on some lettuce, a fresh, ripe avocado, and plenty of the curried chickpea filling.
Make a Curried Chickpea Salad wrap by adding some lettuce, ripe avocado, and this sandwich filling into a tortilla that has been spread with mayo. For a low-carb meal, replace the tortilla wrap with a lettuce wrap.

Quick Tip

Don’t forget the seasonings! Add additional salt, pepper (and even curry powder) until the filling flavors sing. Canned chickpeas contain different amounts of salt, so you may want less or more than what I’ve indicated in the recipe card.