This easy 20-minute chickpea soup is made with canned chickpeas for an incredibly quick, cheap, and healthy soup! It’s velvety smooth, puréed with carrots, celery, and onion, along with garlic and spices. The lemon juice stirred in at the end finishes the whole thing off in the best way – don’t skip it. Grab a loaf of crusty bread to go with and you have yourself the easiest, coziest dinner ever!
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This chickpea soup recipe is my friend Mallory’s and is absolutely delicious and so incredibly easy and healthy. When she told me about it, I immediately knew I needed to share it with you all!
This recipe couldn’t be easier, and it’s extra easy if you have an immersion blender (but don’t fret if you don’t have one). Just sauté some veggies, add garlic, spices, chickpeas, and broth, blend together and thicken, and stir in lemon juice!
I’ll also explain how to make some roasted chickpeas to top the soup with, if you want. They’re great for munching, soup and salad topping, and as a side dish. Totally optional, but it’s easy to stick them in the oven while the soup cooks!
Let’s get to making some super easy and fast chickpea soup.
Ingredients and Substitutions
- Canned chickpeas – or cooked chickpeas. You can probably make this soup with other cooked legumes like white beans but I haven’t tried!
- Celery, carrots, and onion – if you don’t feel like chopping these, look for it pre-chopped in your store (sometimes called mirepoix).
- Cumin – other spices like chili powder, garlic powder, coriander, and paprika would be great here too!
- Crushed red pepper – omit if you don’t like things spicy.
- Vegetable broth – or chicken broth.
- Cornstarch – this is used to thicken the soup and add body – you can omit it if you prefer! More on that later.
- Lemon juice – don’t skip this! It adds a lot to the flavor of the soup. You can use lime juice instead if you want.
- Olive oil, salt, and pepper
How to make Easy Chickpea Soup
First, sauté onions, celery, and carrots in olive oil. Once they’re softened, add garlic, cumin, and crushed red pepper. Let these get fragrant and toasty (this only takes about 30 seconds or so) and then add the drained and rinsed chickpeas. Stir to coat, pour in the broth, bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for 10 minutes (or longer, up to 30 minutes or so!).
Use an immersion blender to purée the soup directly in the pot. I recommend puréeing until it’s nice and velvety smooth, but you can leave it a bit chunky if you want for some texture. Then, stir in a cornstarch slurry and continue to heat for a minute or so to thicken. Turn off heat, add lemon juice, and season to taste with salt and pepper (be liberal with the salt, especially if you use low sodium broth!).
This is a summary of how to make this recipe. Please scroll to the bottom of the post for the full recipe including ingredient amounts and detailed instructions, written in traditional recipe format, or Jump to Recipe.
How to make roasted chickpeas to top the soup!
If you want, you can make a batch of roasted chickpeas to garnish the soup with! They’re a delicious and healthy snack or side dish regardless, and incredibly easy to make.
Just mix a 15-oz. can of drained and rinsed (and dried, to the best of your ability) chickpeas with 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon each garlic powder, chili powder, and cumin. Spread in an even layer on a parchment-covered baking sheet and roast at 425 degrees for 30 minutes, tossing once halfway through. Double everything if you want to have extras for munching.
Here’s more about how to make roasted chickpeas!
Why you should drain and rinse canned beans
While the liquid in a can of beans/chickpeas is definitely edible, I always ALWAYS drain it. Here’s why.
When beans cook or soak in water, some of the indigestible fibers break down from the beans. These are the fibers that notoriously cause indigestion when you consume legumes. I always soak dry beans then drain and rinse them before cooking, and I always drain and rinse canned beans for this reason.
In addition, the liquid in canned beans contains salt and also other ingredients that may help maintain freshness. Draining and rinsing the liquid away helps you be able to control the amount of salt in your recipe a bit more, and removes some of those perhaps unwanted extra ingredients.
THAT SAID – plenty of recipes out there include canned bean/chickpea liquid and if you want to use it, that’s fine! It’s a matter of choice and not a hard and fast rule. If you do leave it in, I recommend you buy low sodium / organic canned chickpeas. As a positive, the chickpea liquid (sometimes called aquafaba) will add some thickness and body to the soup. I opted for a cornstarch slurry instead. Speaking of which…
If you want to skip the cornstarch slurry…
The cornstarch can be skipped if you don’t mind a thinner soup! You can also omit 1 cup of the added broth which will result in a thicker soup (albeit with less volume). Keep in mind, the soup also thickens a bit as it cools (similarly to split pea soup). You can thicken with flour if you prefer by adding 1-2 tablespoons of flour to the veggies after sautéing and slowly stirring in the broth before adding the chickpeas.
Storing / freezing leftover chickpea soup
This soup freezes really well and can be kept in the freezer for up to 6 months in an airtight container.
If you don’t have an immersion blender…
You can use a standing blender in batches to purée the soup. Or, for a more rustic texture, you can use a potato masher to mash up some of the chickpeas and veggies right in the pot. That said, my immersion blender is one of my favorite and most used tools in my kitchen – I definitely recommend investing in one! I have a Vitamix immersion blender, which works beautifully but is pricey. KitchenAid also makes a good immersion blender, for a much lower cost.
Other canned chickpea recipes
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Easy Chickpea Soup
Equipment
- Large Pot with a lid or Dutch Oven
- Immersion Blender or standing blender
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 onion diced (about 1 ½ cups)
- 2 carrots peeled and diced (about 1 ½ cups)
- 2 ribs celery diced (about 1 cup)
- 2 cloves garlic minced (about 2 teaspoons)
- 2 teaspoons ground cumin
- ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper optional, more or less depending on preference
- 30 oz. canned chickpeas drained and rinsed (2 small or 1 large can, or 3 cups cooked chickpeas)
- 4 cups vegetable broth or chicken broth
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- juice of one lemon
- salt and pepper to taste
- extra olive oil, pepper, and roasted chickpeas optional, to top soup for serving
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Instructions
- Heat the 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large pot with a lid over medium heat. Sauté the diced 1 onion, 2 carrots, and 2 ribs celery until softened, about 3 minutes.
- Add the minced 2 cloves garlic, 2 teaspoons ground cumin, and ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper to the pot and stir to coat, cooking until fragrant (about 30 seconds). Add the drained and rinsed 30 oz. canned chickpeas and stir to coat. Pour in the 4 cups vegetable broth, bring to a boil, cover, and simmer on low for 10 minutes (or longer, this part isn't fussy!).
- Use your immersion blender (or standing blender, if you don't have one) to purée the soup to your preference. I blend mine to a completely smooth purée, but feel free to leave some texture if you want.
- Make a slurry with the 1 tablespoon cornstarch and 2 tablespoons water in a small bowl, mixing together well until smooth. Stir into the soup and continue heating until soup is thickened.
- Turn off the heat. Stir in the juice of one lemon and season to taste with salt and pepper (be liberal with the salt, especially if you used a low sodium broth). Serve, topped with extra olive oil, pepper, and roasted chickpeas, if desired.
Notes
- If you want roasted chickpeas to top the soup, here’s how to make them. Drain and rinse a can of chickpeas and mix with 2 tablespoon olive oils, ½ teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon each cumin, garlic powder, and chili powder in a bowl. Spread on a parchment-covered baking sheet and roast for 30 minutes at 425 degrees F, stirring around once halfway through cooking. Double to make extra for munching! Here’s more information on how to make roasted chickpeas.
- Time saving tip: If you don’t want to chop veggies, look for pre-chopped celery, carrots, and onions, often called “mirepoix,” in the produce or frozen veggie section of your grocery store. You can also chop up these veggies yourself and freeze them in a large zip-top bag in bulk, so they’re at the ready when you need them!
- Draining and rinsing the chickpeas helps make them more digestible by getting rid of the cooking liquid, which has some of the indigestible fibers legumes are known for. Depending on the brand of chickpeas used, it can also reduce the salt content and any extra extra ingredients that may have been added to the can of chickpeas to maintain freshness. If you aren’t sensitive to bean liquid, you can keep the liquid in if you prefer, especially with a low-sodium/organic brand! The chickpea liquid will add body to the soup and negate the need for adding all or some of the cornstarch.
- Adding the cornstarch is optional, if you don’t mind a thinner soup. Or you can leave out 1 cup of the broth, which will also result in a thicker soup (though with less volume!). You can add more cornstarch if you want a really thick soup, but keep in mind it will thicken a bit as it cools.
- You can do a flour thickener if you prefer by adding 1-2 tablespoons flour to the veggies and spices after sautéing, then slowly stirring in the broth before adding the chickpeas.
- The leftovers are great to freeze and will last for months in your freezer.
- A potato masher is a good alternative to both an immersion blender and standing blender – just mash the soup directly in the pot for a more rustic, textured consistency.
Nutrition
Nutrition Information Disclaimer
The provided nutrition information is my best estimate and reflects one serving of the recipe (total servings indicated at top of recipe card). It does not include any added sodium from seasoning to taste, any optional ingredients, and it does not take brands into account. I use an automatic API to calculate this information. Feel free to calculate it yourself using one of these tools:
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