Here is my answer to your requests for gluten free snacks:
My family enjoys this hummus recipe for both snack time and as a dressing on these lovely chicken lettuce wraps. Hummus is not on the paleo diet, but I do often make this recipe because it is healthy, full of vitamins and healthy fat, and garbanzo beans are a really good source of folate. One serving of garbanzo beans offers 71% DV (daily value) of folate, and 84% DV of manganese. This recipe also has garlic and olive oil, both are anti-inflammatory foods and offer anti-bacterial properties.
Prep time: Garbanzo beans need to soak in water overnight and boiled for about 1 hour. The rest of the prep takes 5 minutes.
Ingredients:
4 cups of cooked garbanzo beans
4 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
1/3 to 1/2 cup of filtered water; amount depends on preferred consistency
2 tablespoons of sea salt
Directions:
1. Soak garbanzo beans in cold water overnight, or during the day for at least 8 hours, ensuring that all the beans are covered in water. They will expand a significant amount so make sure to place them in a large bowl or pot.
2. After soaking, place beans in a large pot with cold water (should cover beans by at least 2 inches) and 1 tablespoon of salt and boil for approximately one hour, until beans are soft (may take a bit shorter or longer depending on your water quality and how long they soaked).
3. Drain beans and allow to cool.
4. Place beans and all the other ingredients (including the other tablespoon of sea salt) except for the water into a food processor and blend until everything is well incorporated. While blending, add water slowly until desired consistency is reached.
FYI, why soak beans?:
Eliminating Gas from Beans
For some, the greatest obstacle to preparing beans is discomfort associated with digestion. The intestinal gas begins with the arrival of small chains of carbohydrates (called oligosaccharides) into the large intestine. People cannot digest these molecules efficiently, but bacteria residing at the end of the gut do and produce gas as a byproduct. Some sources say that presoaking or precooking beans alleviates gas production by removing these carbohydrates.
Soaking dried beans in mineral-rich; hard tap water can toughen their skins. Some recommend using distilled water to avoid this issue, but you can just add sea salt to the tap water, which prevents the magnesium and calcium in the water from binding to the cell wall.
Storing Soaked Beans
If you happen to soak beans and aren’t able to use them immediately, they can be drained, transferred to a zipper-lock bag, and refrigerated for up to four days, which gives you plenty of time to make this yummy chocolate chip cookie dough recipe.
(FYI – Simmering beans typically produce a frothy cap of foam. It’s nothing more than pockets of air stabilized by proteins exuded from the beans that dissolve in the water. Feel free to skim off the surface.)
Enjoy!!!