This is my new favorite lunch. It’s quick, healthy, and soooooo filling! I fully expected to need to eat something else or be hungry again in an hour, but I was satisfied and not hungry again for hours.
I used my cilantro pesto for this recipe. There are lots of things you can do with this awesome pesto, so don’t worry about wasting it. It goes great with pasta, so you could use the rest of it for a quick and healthy dinner option. Or you could freeze it and next time you want to have this lunch, the pesto is ready to go! It is also great on sandwiches of all kinds.
The cilantro pesto, along with some fresh lime juice, make this unique smashed chickpea salad so flavorful. It’s perfect on toast. I hope you’ll give this one a try–I think you’re going to love it!
Before I get to the recipe, I want to let you know that I’m still working behind the scenes to change a few things around here. My goal is to make this site better for you. I want everything easier to find and more user-friendly. You’ll notice I have two recipe pages right now. The new framework I’m using has a great way to set up a recipe index and it will automatically add the new recipes as I post them. Wonderful! The only problem is I haven’t always categorized my recipes properly (I didn’t have a soup category, for example) so I’m having to go back and categorize old posts to make sure the recipes are showing up. So I left my old page up in the meantime so all the categories are there. Once I get all the old posts categorized, I’ll delete the old page. Make sense? I know other things are looking weird from time to time. Thanks for bearing with me as I’m doing this all on my own and I’m not exactly a computer guru. Simple tasks that should take me 10 minutes end up taking me 2 hours. But I’m getting there! In the meantime, your feedback is welcome. 🙂
All right, let’s eat some lunch!
Smashed Chickpea Salad on Toast
- Total Time: 5 minutes
- Yield: 2 servings 1x
Description
Smashed Chickpea Salad with Ciilantro Pesto on Toast. This is a quick and easy vegetarian lunch that is healthy and filling!
Ingredients
- 1 (15 ounce) can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
- 2 tablespoons lime juice
- 1/4 teaspoon salt, optional (omit if using salted pistachios or almonds in the pesto)
- 3 heaping tablespoons cilantro pesto, recipe below
- 4 slices whole grain bread, toasted
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, smash your chickpeas using a large fork or potato masher. Leave a few chickpeas in tact for texture. Add the lime juice, salt, if using, and cilantro pesto, and stir so the ingredients are evenly distributed. Divide the mixture between the four pieces of toast. Enjoy!
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 0 minutes
- Category: Breakfast
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 serving
- Calories: 527
- Sugar: 6.5g
- Sodium: 550mg
- Fat: 22.5g
- Carbohydrates: 71g
- Protein: 19.5g
Keywords: chickpea salad
Cilantro Pesto
- Total Time: 10 minutes
- Yield: 4 servings 1x
Description
A tasty pesto recipe with a variety of uses!
Ingredients
- 1 cup (packed) organic cilantro leaves, large stems removed
- 1/3 cup pistachios (if you don’t have pistachios on hand you can use almonds, walnuts, etc.)
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil*
- 1 clove garlic (use 1/2 a clove if you find raw garlic too strong)
- 1/3 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
Instructions
- In a food processor or blender, process the cilantro, pistachios, oil, and garlic until smooth. Transfer to a bowl and stir in the cheese.
Notes
*Add more oil if you prefer a more oily pesto.
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 0 minutes
- Category: Sauce
- Cuisine: Italian
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 serving
- Calories: 177
- Sugar: 0.25g
- Sodium: 133mg
- Fat: 18g
- Carbohydrates: 2g
- Protein: 3.8g
Keywords: pesto
This looks so fresh and delicious! I have a couple cans of chickpeas in the pantry I may need to break out!
Thanks, Sarah! I hope you give this a try.
This looks like a great lunch or snack option! I’ve been looking for some different vegetarian lunch recipes lately (I love egg salad, but it’s not really the healthiest)…I bet the lime juice really gives this a nice kick. Looking forward to trying it!
I hope you love it!
i don’t even need bread, hand me a spoon! yum
Right?!
This looks fabulous & so healthy!!
Thank you, Marla!
This looks like a recipe my stomach can handle and Im going to make this, truthfully… And Maryea, I obviously have tried to build my starter blog. Truthfully I have full blog- prints drawn out on paper and am saving money to hire someone to build it correctly. Its around 500 so Im doing this in steps. And I still don’t understand Facebook and I still don’t no how twitter yet. But I kick butt on instagram. Have a great evening. 🙂
I should totally hire someone. It’s just not in the budget right now so I’m trying to do things on my own. Figuring it out as I go! You’ll get the hang of all the social media. Facebook is the easiest–if you can do Insta you can do FB! 🙂 I hope you love this!
I recently had my first date with chickpeas and I have to say, we hit it off quite nicely. Perhaps our second date will be….. “smashing”! 😉
It totally should be! 😉
I might have to try this w/sunflower or pumpkin seeds, so I can include in our (nut free) school lunches. It looks great!
Thanks, Tracy! Let me know how it goes if you try it with the seeds.
Saving this recipe! It looks fantastic!
Thanks, Chelsey!
I’m seriously drooling over here! I just can’t get over your pretty your pictures have been lately. Loving the new recipe page! I remember how much I was dreading re-categorizing everything, but using the “quick edit” button to fix the category made it so much easier!
Aaaah thank you for that tip! I swear I’m the most clueless blogger ever. Technology is not my friend. About the pics–I’ve been working hard on it, so thanks so much for noticing. 🙂