Knowledge Base > Dan Marek - Last Ask Me Anything (Office Hours) of 2025!
Dan Marek - Last Ask Me Anything (Office Hours) of 2025!
This event was on
Tuesday, December 09, 2025 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern
Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to cours… Read More.
Question:
Should I remove the skin of chickpeas before preparing a dish?
— Debbie Bixler
Answer:
So there's definitely two schools on this. Um, you know, a lot of people are religious about like, yes, I need to be able to remove all the hulls on the outside of my chickpeas before using them. Um, I, I don't to tell you the truth, I leave the, uh, skins on them. Um, and I mean, I do my kids eat a chickpea salad like probably twice a week for lunch, a packet in their school lunch, and I leave the skins on 'em all the time. It just adds, you know, texture wise, it's not gonna add a little anything at all. Um, they just kind of disappear into it. Um, but the other school is absolutely, they're like, yep, you need to be able to get rid of those skins because they look at the skins as something like, almost like a popcorn kernel gets stuck in your teeth, right? And I understand that and fully agree with it. It just doesn't bug me in particular. So I don't go through the process of doing it because I'm usually trying to make things pretty quickly for a family. Um, so I leave the skins on and don't worry at all about it, you know? Um, and that's either using canned chickpeas or if I'm making them, um, you know, out of dried chickpeas at the same time. Now, if you're growing them yourself and you can find the skin and it's easy to be able to take off, go ahead totally okay to be able to do that. But if you're in a hurry, don't worry about it. 'cause it's not really gonna make that much of a difference.