Looking for healthy and easy lunch recipes? This delicious chickpea salad sandwich is essentially a vegan tuna salad using chickpeas!
Why is finding healthy and easy lunch recipes so hard? Alex and I like to eat extremely simple at breakfast and lunch, so that we can spend our time and energy on dinner recipes. So here’s one of our favorite easy lunch tricks ever: is this chickpea salad sandwich! It’s basically a vegetarian chicken salad sandwich (aka chickpea tuna salad!). It’s so tasty, it’s become one of our most popular chickpea recipes. Even our toddler Larson is a huge fan: he tries to sneak bites while we’re making it!
How to make a chickpea salad sandwich
This chickpea salad sandwich is truly easy to make: and we’re not just saying that. It takes just 10 minutes to whip up the chickpea salad and throw it onto a sandwich. The only cutting involved is thinly slicing some celery and green onions. Mix that up with some chickpeas, mashed with a fork, mayonnaise, lemon juice, and celery seed, and you’ve got a fresh, refreshing chickpea salad.
One note: you can use canned or cooked chickpeas for this chickpea salad sandwich. Our preference is canned chickpeas (see below), but both work. Here’s our Pressure Cooker chickpeas method if you happen to have an Instant Pot. If you don’t, use our How to Cook Dried Beans in a Dutch Oven (which includes chickpeas / garbanzo beans). However, if you do use canned chickpeas in this recipe, remember a few things
- Canned chickpeas have a bit of salt added, so you’ll want to flavor with a few pinches of kosher salt before using.
- The texture of chickpeas cooked at home can be drier than canned, so you may have to add a bit more mayonnaise to the chickpea salad. Because of this, we prefer making it with canned chickpeas. However, we’ve made it many times with cooked chickpeas too.
Related: 18 Delicious Healthy Snack Recipes | Easy Dinner Recipes for Busy Lives
Toppings for this chickpea salad sandwich
Here, we’ve kept the toppings pretty minimal for this chickpea tuna sandwich. We’ve used spring greens for some texture. A fun trick that we’ve used is spreading hummus onto the bread slices before assembling the sandwich. We happened to have it on hand and it made the sandwich even more delicious! Of course you could use mayonnaise, or also omit it. And if you’re up for a challenge, you could use our Homemade Sourdough Bread or Easy Dutch Oven Bread for the sandwich!
Like our Mediterranean Veggie Sandwich, you can use any toppings you like for this chickpea salad sandwich. Here are a few that might be fun to get your wheels turning!
- 1-Hour Quick Pickled Onions
- Shredded carrots (using a a Handheld Julienne Shredder is helpful)
- Sprouts or microgreens
- Fresh tomatoes
- Spicy mayo (mix a drizzle of hot sauce into mayo)
- Potato chips (if you’re into the crunchy sandwich type of thing)
- Quick Refrigerator Dill Pickles
This chickpea salad sandwich recipe is…
Vegetarian, vegan (with vegan mayo or cashew cream), plant based, and dairy free.
Print
Chickpea Salad Sandwich
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 0 minutes
- Total Time: 10 minutes
- Yield: 2 sandwiches 1x
Description
Looking for healthy and easy lunch recipes? This delicious chickpea salad sandwich features a vegan tuna salad using chickpeas!
Ingredients
- 15 ounce can chickpeas or (1 ½ cups chickpeas cooked from dry*)
- 1 rib celery
- 3 green onions
- 1 to 2 tablespoons mayonnaise, vegan mayonnaise, or cashew cream
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon celery seed
- Kosher salt & fresh ground pepper
- 4 slices bread (try our Homemade Bread)
- Lettuce, spring green mix, or sprouts
- Hummus, optional
Instructions
- Thinly slice the celery (if it’s a large rib, cut in half lengthwise first). Thinly slice the green onions.
- Drain and rinse the chickpeas. In a medium bowl, smash the chickpeas with a fork.
- Combine the chickpeas with the chopped celery and green onions, mayonnaise, lemon juice, and celery seed. Add about ¼ to ½ teaspoon kosher salt, depending on your chickpea brand and taste preferences, and fresh ground pepper to taste. Taste and salt until the flavor pops! If the salad is dry, add more mayonnaise (cooked chickpeas have a drier texture than canned).
- Assemble the chickpea salad sandwich: If desired, spread the bread with hummus (this amps it up a bit but not required). Top the sandwich with lettuce or greens and chickpea spread.
Notes
*If using cooked chickpeas, remember that canned chickpeas have a bit of salt added, so you’ll want to flavor with a few pinches of kosher salt before using. Also the texture of chickpeas cooked at home can be drier than canned, so you may have to add a bit more mayonnaise. Because of this, we prefer making this chickpea salad with canned chickpeas, but we’ve absolutely made it with cooked chickpeas too! Here’s How to Make Chickpeas or our Instant Pot chickpeas: we make them all the time.
- Category: Main Dish
- Method: Mixed
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: Chickpea Salad Sandwich, Chickpea Tuna Salad
Looking for more easy lunch recipes?
This chickpea salad sandwich is so easy, it’s perfect for quick lunches and for beginner cooks like college students! Outside of this chickpea salad sandwich, here are a few more easy lunch recipes:
- 15 Sandwich Recipes That Aren’t Boring
- Hummus and Veggie Roll Ups
- Instant Pot Hard Boiled Eggs or Perfect Boiled Eggs
- 5-Minute Pesto Arugula Breakfast Sandwich
- Coleslaw & Swiss Melt Sandwich
- Classic 5 Ingredient Hummus
- 15 Easy Vegetarian Lunch Ideas
- Easy Vegan Recipes for Beginners
This chickpea salad sandwich sounds so delicious and convenient for lunch! :)
Just made this and used vegan mayo… SO GOOD!! the best vegan “chicken salad” I’ve had! Thanks for recipe
Oh we are so glad to hear it! The best vegan chicken salad is the biggest compliment — thank you!
Great recipe…easy, healthy and the most delicious sandwich I’ve eaten in a long time! Hubby loved it too!
Oh we are so glad to hear it! Thanks for making our recipe!
nice recipe and a great reminder that chickpeas have a decent amount of protein, like a chicken salad sandwich in consistency, thank you for this recipe
YES! Sometimes people have texture issues with them, but here they’re just right. Thanks for making it!
I made this for dinner because I felt lazy and it was Cook’s choice night. It was great! And now I have lunch for tomorrow too.
Haha, that sounds just perfect! And leftovers are great too :) So glad you enjoyed!
I’ve been eating Vegetarian foods for 7 years now, but I needed new fun and easy ideas to make eating and cooking fun again. I’m Glad I found this website. I like how good every plate looks. I’m going to try the “Chickpea sandwich” for lunch today.
I’ve been eating Vegetarian foods for 7 years now, but I needed new fun and easy ideas to make eating and cooking fun again. I’m Glad I found this website. I like how good every plate looks. I’m going to try the “Chickpea sandwich” for lunch today.
We always need fun new ideas too! Let us know what you think.
This has become my favorite sandwich spread and I have a stockpile of canned chickpeas in my pantry!
It’s SOOOOOO good! I roll it up in a whole wheat tortilla and throw on a romaine leaf. Best.lunch.ever! Thank you!
Oh we are so happy to hear this! And it’s our favorite lunch too :) Thanks for making it!
I’m not vegetarian but wanted to find healthy sandwich ideas for when I’m on the go during my pregnancy. I was getting so burned out on pb&j. This was a quick recipe I could whip up the night before work and pack nicely for lunch. Thank you!
Wow! I just recently decided to switch my diet to a more plant based one and came across this recipe. If someone else had made this for me and not said anything about it being made from chickpeas, I highly doubt I would have known. This tastes amazing and even left me feeling full, which was one of my main concerns when switching to this type of diet. Thank you for such a wonderful lunch idea!
You’re welcome! So glad you enjoyed it :)