Ingredients
Chickpeas: dried weight and drained weight differ
When cooking chickpeas, distinguish dried, net and drained weights, then prepare the right product for your sauce and the amount the recipe calls for.
For a quick sauce, start with cooked chickpeas in a jar or tin. Dried chickpeas need their own preparation: they cannot go straight into a sauce designed for cooked ones. The first check happens on the label, before you even reach for the colander.
Which weight should you read on the tin?
Net weight includes the tin’s contents and liquid; drained net weight means the chickpeas after that liquid is removed. Dried weight refers to the pulses before hydration. Read the recipe and packaging together to compare the product in the same state.
The base recipe for four servings of tomato and chickpea pasta calls for 400 g of cooked, drained chickpeas. To work out how many tins to buy, add their drained weights, not their net weights including the liquid. Tin sizes vary: check each label.
Take this example: two tins each labelled 240 g drained weight give 480 g in total. Drain the chickpeas, rinse and let them drain again, then weigh out 400 g for the recipe. That leaves about 80 g if the amounts you obtain match the labels. These figures illustrate the calculation, not a universal tin size. The colander sorts things out; the scales do the maths.
Drain before adding to the sauce
Tip the cooked chickpeas into a colander, rinse and let them drain. This avoids adding an unknown volume of liquid to the sauce. If they are seasoned, read the ingredients: they may not be equivalent to plain chickpeas.
Add the chickpeas to the hot sauce to warm through, stirring without crushing if you want them whole. For a thicker sauce, crush a small portion with the spoon.
Give dried chickpeas their own preparation time
Follow the packet for soaking and cooking dried chickpeas, planning this work separately. Pasta cooking time is not dried chickpea cooking time. Then weigh the cooked, drained portion required. For an opened pack or leftovers, consult the label and the preparation planning guide; this page gives no universal storage period.
The 400 g of cooked, drained chickpeas in this recipe cannot be replaced with 400 g of dried chickpeas. Chickpeas absorb water during preparation: do not use a fixed multiplier here to work out how much dried product to buy. Once they are cooked and drained, weigh the amount the recipe needs.
Sources for this page
- Question Santé : Légumineuses sèches et en bocal , Accessed October 21, 2026
- Assurance Maladie : Définition des légumes secs , Accessed October 21, 2026
- DGCCRF: reading net quantity and drained net weight , Accessed November 8, 2026
- Global Pulse Confederation: preparing canned or dried pulses , Accessed November 8, 2026
