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do you know a tool that can grind hard things like raw chick peas but manually, I mean, without electricity. Maybe a windmill?

My goal is to make falafels.

user3212519
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  • I will continue to try to help you find just what you are looking for, but I'm done now without answers to the questions I have asked. I'd also like to know a price range. The most recent edit to the answer I gave is the best I can do with the information I have. – Jolenealaska Jun 02 '14 at 00:43

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The Wondermill Junior Deluxe claims that it will grind chickpeas, it's over $200 American. I've found several articles (example) that claim you can do it in a manual coffee grinder. Here's a reasonably priced, highly rated manual coffee grinder from Amazon. Amazon will let customers ask questions of others that have purchased a specific item. I asked if that particular grinder will grind raw chickpeas. I'll update this post if I get a credible answer.

EDIT: I did get an answer from somebody on Amazon who owns that particular coffee grinder. She tried it (just for you:) It didn't work. The beans were too hard for the machine.

Other articles recommend a meat grinder.

You mention a windmill though. Are you wanting to do huge amounts?

Another point of clarification: Are you grinding dry or soaked chickpeas? If you want to grind dry chickpeas, the coffee grinder is almost certainly the better option (although maybe not since this one didn't work at all). For soaked chickpeas, you'd probably be better off with the meat grinder. Since I've seen recipes for falafels starting either way, I can't know which way you are wanting to do it.

Jolenealaska
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  • The use of both "hard" and "raw" makes me think they mean dry (unsoaked) chickpeas. – starsplusplus May 31 '14 at 19:33
  • @starsplusplus I lean towards that too, that's why I only asked on Amazon about the coffee grinder, but it's strange, most traditional falafel recipes start by grinding soaked chickpeas. Some do start with flour though. – Jolenealaska May 31 '14 at 22:05
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Chickpeas are HARD, but they will fall to a standard hand corn mill if you do it in a couple of passes. First pass you set the mill wide, just to crack the beans in half. If you set it too tight, you risk breaking the handle, or the plates. Once you've got the beans broken, they're not so tough, and you can get them to a course corn meal like texture with another pass. A third pass will get the product finer yet. A window screen filter is effective for removing the bits of chickpea seedcoat from your coarse flour.

Having made chickpea flour this way for a few months, I located a local source of besan flour (Indian store, also called gram flour), and now use the corn mill for more reasonable things like corn, and cinnamon sticks.

For falafels, you just cook the beans, then mash them. The flour is good for pancakes.

Wayfaring Stranger
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  • Most recipes I saw in my search call for the chickpeas to be processed after being soaked, but before cooking. I did find a few that call for starting with cooked beans, but those recipes were all from very "western" sources. – Jolenealaska May 31 '14 at 22:15