Processed chickpeas (leblebi) are similar to chickpea seeds but smaller.
Chickpea seeds are naturally hard and inedible, but in a few steps, they are turned into a delicious snack called nokhodchi (processed chickpeas).
First, chickpeas are cleaned with a sieve. Then, four kg of them are poured, along with some riverbed sand, into a cast-iron pan equipped with metal blades to be rotated and heated for four minutes.
The operation is carried out with natural gas, and the use of sand prevents high heat from burning the chickpeas.
The hot chickpea and sand mixture is then sifted with a metal wire mesh.
The chickpeas are then poured into a circular wooden container and sacked when cooled.
It takes four to five days for the chickpeas to fully cool, and they are then transferred to a handmade basement—which is in the form of burrows five to ten meters deep and is usually constructed under the workshop—and spread on the floor.
It takes 48 hours for the processed chickpeas to get moist and ready.
Then, they are put into sacks and taken to the workshop for roasting.
In the workshop, they are roasted for two minutes at twice the temperature of the heating time.
For chickpea flour, it is done without salt, and for salty chickpeas, which are consumed as a snack, they sprinkle saline water on hot chickpeas with a special broom.
Chickpea flour is used for such foods as cutlets, and of course, just like nuts, it is used as a snack and even as a souvenir.
To visit the traditional chickpea-processing workshop, you can travel to Khomeini Shahr, 12 km northwest of Isfahan. It is a historic city with an area of 175 sq km and a population of about 245,000.
In the past, of course, the number of workshops was much higher, but you can still find a few traditional workshops in this area and buy Khomeini Shahr’s delicious processed chickpeas as a souvenir.
