How to make Besan a.k.a Chickpea Flour at home

Like i said in my previous post, the one thing you miss here in Rio is Indian food. But sometimes missing things is good. You do things which you would never have thought of doing. Take this for example : One fine day you crave for dhokla. But hey Leave dhokla you don´t even get the basic ingredient used in making dhokla if you ever thought of making one, this basic ingredient being Besan a.k.a Chickpea flour. Well it so happened i was craving so much that i decide to research and make besan myself. Took me only one try to make it and came out wonderful.

We were able to make alloo pakodas (like Potato fritters) and onion Pakodas (onion fritters) with this besan. We also made dhokla with the same, which though took a w tries before we mastered it :D

So for making besan at home you need following.

1) Chickpeas (Kabuli chana)
2) Fine Sieve (channi)
3) Coffee grinder

I personally use the Black and Decker coffee grinder attached below. It has one juicer attachment and lower part is used for grinding of Coffee/grains/peanuts.

Black and Decker coffee grinder


Chickpeas

The most important aspect of making Chickpea flour in such a grinder is that, one has to keep in mind most of these coffee grinders are attached with blades which are good for lighter grains of Coffee and not meant for milling. So one has to take care of how much of Chickpeas do you put in one go. Ideally i put a small handful (around 5-6 tablespoons) at one time in dry grinder. After 80-90% of chickpeas have been finely powdered. I use a very fine sieve to collect fine chickpea flour. and transfer back the coarse left one to dry grinder along with another 4-5 spoons. Generally for my cooking i need about 2-3 rounds of grinding. So its not so time consuming.

Home made besan/chickpea flour

I Have sen people on many forums asking shouldn´t chickpea be roasted before grinding, Well from my experience its not needed. The chickpea flour we got was just as good as we used to get from markets in india (good enough for making fritters/dhokla/indian crepes).


Below i have attached example of dhokla we made with home made besan. And Except for the shape it was very much like dhoklas you would get in indian markets.

Home made dhokla

I will try and cover Home made dhokla recipe which works well for us in my next post.