I love sandwiches. When I was a kid, my family ate a lot of everyday sandwiches but there were also the sandwiches that my mum made for special occasions: platters of delicate sandwich quarters with their crusts removed and filled with ham and mustard, curried egg, chicken, salmon and, one of my favourites – grated cheese, celery and chives, dressed in mayonnaise. My mum would use loaves and loaves of bread, lavishly butter each slice of bread up to the edge, layer on the filling, then deftly slice off the crusts. We kids would hang around, longing for just one of the delicate crustless quarters, but we were only ever allowed to eat the cut-off crusts.
Of course, this smashed chickpea sandwich has very little relationship to those party sandwiches of my childhood. This is a proper deli-style sandwich and it needs a hearty wholemeal, sour dough or good solid roll to make it work. It’s the sort of sandwich that can keep you going all day – the smashed chickpea mix is delicious by itself or it can built on to make a super extravaganza sandwich.
For this sandwich, I added some guacamole and roasted red peppers, but any combination of smoky baba ganoush, roasted pumpkin slices, grilled eggplant, a garlicky tahini sauce, tomato, crumbled feta and lettuce, will build this humble smashed chickpea salad into a stairway to sandwich heaven. Best of all, it’s quick to make – it’s just a matter of opening a can of chickpeas, chopping a few other ingredients and, there you have it. As always, use good olive oil and don’t be stingy with it: that and the sharp bite of the lemon are the things that make these smashed chickpeas so good.
Smashed chickpea salad
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
- 1x 400 gram can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
- 2 tablespoons of pitted, halved and thinly sliced black olives
- 1 tablespoon of finely chopped red onion
- 1 tablespoon of finely chopped fresh parsley
- Zest and juice from ½ to 1 lemon
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
- A few glugs of olive oil (to taste)
- Mix everything except for the olive oil in a bowl. Lightly mash the chickpeas with a fork or potato masher. Add olive oil to taste and adjust seasonings.
- Pile onto a crusty roll or good sandwich bread. It’s good as is, but even better with some extra fixings.
The Back Yard Lemon Tree 
Ooh, that chickpea salad looks phenomenal! I have somehow never eaten a chickpea salad sandwich–clearly I need to remedy this immediately. 🙂
You definitely need to try this it’s delicious.
What a gerat idea: I have just changed today’s evening ‘menu’ [I have my main meal at lunch] to this – methinks I have mashed chickpeas on sandwiches before and love them but do so like some of your ideas here!! Appetizing and healthy!!
A very good and healthy habit to eat your main meal during the day. Of course you don’t have to use this as a sandwich filling you can just eat it as a salad without the bread.
Oh boy, that looks amazing. I’ll pass on the olives (a weird quirk of mine) but the smashed chickpeas, yes please!
Ooh you’re right, we’re on the same wavelength with our chickpea salads! Yours looks awesome – love that chunky bread!
Great sandwich! It only clicked that I could put chickpeas in sandwiches last year – it totally rocked my world. Love it!
This is a great vegan sandwich filling as well. Which is always handy to have.
That’s a fine-looking sandwich! School lunches soured me on sandwiches for a while, but in the past few years they’ve been working their way back into my favour – smashed chickpeas would definitely help.
Those years of flaccid, boring sandwiches in the school lunchbox took their toll on all of us. Still I think the basic idea of the sandwich is pure food genius.
YUM! I am a huge sandwich fan and this sounds so good, I’m off to check for the ingredients in my pantry.
I’m so hungry looking at that! I can’t wait to make this, thanks.
More pure gorgeousness…why did it take me SOOO long to get around to “T” in my RSS Feed Reader! Its autumn here in Tassie and that means a severe lack of ripe tomatoes but a plethora of green…do you have any recipes for creatively using green tomatoes? I would be MOST appreciative 🙂