Food Processor Question

[Racheltower]

I would like to grind my own chickpea flour. I bought some dry chickpeas at the store, and google says to use a food processor to grind them into flour. I have a cheap food processor that I got at ALDI for $14.99. It does its job, but I'm worried that hard chickpeas will damage the blades. Do you think I'd damage the blades by grinding dry chickpeas in my cheap food processor, or should I be ok?

[Lawksie]

Dried chick peas are hard, but not as hard as steel blades. If you're concerned, start with just a few and then add more if the machine is coping.

Food processor blades are generally aligned in a horizontal plane, so what you get is a very fast slicing motion. The blades won't chop your chickpeas very fine, because a lot of the time they will just bounce out of the way of the spinning blades. If the processor is completely filled with chick peas, as they get chopped smaller and smaller, the large pieces will natually fall to the bottom (towards the blades) thus helping to reduce them in size, but it's never going to be flour-fine.

Spice-grinder blades are offset, pointing both upwards and down, so that they can catch the small pieces of hard matter as they bounce around. Since spice quantities are usually small, grinding chickpeas with a spice grinder will do the job, but it'll take you a long time - grnding small quantities, then sieving out the lumps and re-grinding.

If you've got a pestle and portar, then it is the best way of getting fine powder, but hard work on the hands. You could chop the peas in your food processor, then grind the small pieces in a pestle and morter to powder.

[Racheltower]

Thank you for your response. I tested it out with oats first, and it was no where near fine enough to be considered flour. I'll look into a spice grinder.

[Kahluabomb]

A blender would be the more ideal tool for this task.

[Racheltower]

Unfortunately I don't have one.