Chickpeas with cucumber and sweet potato

Chickpeas with cucumber and sweet potato

Another cheap and cheerful topping, using fibre-rich and versatile dried chickpeas, one sweet potato and half a cucumber. The chicken stock provides flavour and, as you can see from the photos, a not insignificant amount of residual chicken.

Nutritionally, this is a fibre-rich, energy-sustaining topping. Chickpeas provide plant protein, complex carbohydrate, folate, iron, magnesium and potassium, together with fermentable fibres and resistant starch. Sweet potato adds further carbohydrate and fibre, as well as beta-carotene, while cucumber contributes moisture. The residual chicken supplies highly digestible animal protein and complements the amino-acid profile of the chickpeas; fat in the stock also assists absorption of the sweet potato’s beta-carotene.

Soaking and thorough cooking soften the chickpeas and reduce phytate, while mashing or partly blitzing the mixture further disrupts the plant food matrix. These were soft enough to leave whole, so we could forego the blitzing today.

Ingredients

750g soaked chickpeas
1 sweet potato
half a large cucumber
1 litre chicken stock

Soaking chickpeas: after about four hours the chickpeas have swollen to twice their size. I have used one jarful here, then divided the remainder over both jars to sit for a couple more days and sprout.

     

Just over a litre of chicken stock was left over in the pan from cooking chicken. Add 750 g – around one 750 ml germination jar – of soaked chickpeas.

     

Add half a large cucumber, sliced quite thickly and one sweet potato, sliced thickly with skin on (skin is really easy to remove once cooked).

     

Cook for three hours or until chickpeas are soft enough to mash.

Pricing

Now and again I wonder about costing my own toppings. At around 4 euros a kilo, dried chickpeas probably accounted for 350g, the sweet potato was less than 1 euro and half a cucumber around 45 cents.

That puts the entire batch at under €2.85, excluding the leftover chicken stock:

• Chickpeas: about €1.40
• Sweet potato: under €1
• Half cucumber: about €0.45

The finished topping weighed roughly 2 kg, that’s around €1.40 per kilo at current prices, including residual chicken that would otherwise have been waste. Pretty good value for money.

And if I didn’t have stock, I could always use a water with a couple of the frozen beef fat cubes from the concentrated beef broth made earlier in the week…

*****

IN THE BOWL

 

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Important Considerations:

• Always consult your veterinarian before making any significant dietary changes, particularly where there are pre-existing health conditions or dietary restrictions.
• If you are feeding commercial food, check the label for ingredients before giving more. Excessive intake of any foods can have adverse effects.
• Ensure (where possible) that you use high-quality, organic products specifically formulated for pets (or better still, human grade ingredients) to avoid any potential adverse effects.
• Introduce new foods gradually to avoid adverse effects such as gastrointestinal upset or diarrhoea.
• I provide nutritional information purely as a helpful guide. Nutritional information on ingredients is obtained from the US Department of Agriculture’s FoodData Central site (https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/index.html) and any nutritional information provided in recipes is based on an online calculator: calories and other information will vary based on brands, ingredients and other factors.
• Check nutrient levels and recommendations for your dog’s weight, age and activity. For example this nutritional guideline produced by FEDIAF.
• I am not a professional canine nutritionist but supporting research is cited.
• The recipes shared were created by me and tested in my kitchen – and tasted and approved by our doggy friends!