Simple Mayo-Free Chickpea Salad

This is the chickpea salad recipe that you absolutely need in your life! It’s so simple to make and contains no processed vegan mayo – just a couple of staple ingredients from the pantry. This salad works wonders in sandwiches, spread onto some crackers, made into a lettuce wrap, or just simply eaten all by itself, it’s that good! Perfect for meal prepping, a picnic outdoors, or a casual mid-day snack on a warm day.

Inspiration

When I was a kid, I would literally eat mayo by the spoonful. Now as an adult, the idea of mayo is absolutely repulsive to me, vegan or not. It just seems like a slimy blob of off-white fatty triglycerides. And that is essentially what it is. Yikes, my arteries clog just thinking of it. I want none of that here, so even though I was craving a chickpea salad sandwich, I became determined to find a way around not including mayo, and instead, using simple whole ingredients I already had on hand. I liked the idea of using aquafaba, since a can of chickpeas had to be opened regardless. One less ingredient to take out, and food waste is being prevented. Yay!

How to make mayo-free chickpea salad

This recipe is:

Quick

Filling

Simple

Fresh

Hearty

& Versatile

Make the salad

The base salad ingredients consist of mashed chickpeas, celery, onions, chives, and capers. The texture of the soft mashed chickpeas is complimented so well by the crisp, fresh veggies, while the capers add that extra salty and tangy bite to the mix, evening it all out. It’s the perfect combination, and you don’t even have to stop there! The ingredients listed are for a basic chickpea salad recipe, and you could totally add additional veggies or ingredients for an extra bite. Freshly minced red peppers or carrots would be an awesome addition to the mix, or feel free to swap the chives with some fresh dill! Work your magic and get creative with it!

When it comes to mashing up those chickpeas, a potato masher works wonders in this case, but so does a fork and your own two hands! Use whatever is available, and mash to whatever consistency you like. I usually mash up about 90% of the beans, while leaving the remaining 10% mostly intact for added texture here and there.

Make the sauce

The sauce that holds the salad ingredients together consists of nothing more than tahini, aquafaba, lemon juice, dijon mustard, salt, and pepper! So simple. Add all these ingredients to a tall cup and use an immersion blender to combine and emulsify. Pour that good-good onto the salad, mix, and there you have it, it’s done!

If you don’t have an immersion blender, no worries, you can add the sauce ingredients to a high-speed blender or food processor.

Serving

This chickpea salad is incredible when it’s slapped between two slices of bread and some fresh leafy greens. For a lower-carb option, you could forget the bread and just wrap it in a crisp piece of lettuce or cabbage. As a snack, use it as a dip for crackers or slabbed onto a stick of celery. Heck, you might even get the most enjoyment out of it by serving it with nothing more than a spoon and eating it as is!

Storing

Store any leftovers in an airtight container and keep them in the refrigerator for up to a week. This salad is a great option for meal prepping or a quick and nutritious meal that can be thrown together in a couple of minutes. If I am pressed for time before an early morning shift at work, I will spread this on a piece of toast for a no-brainer, time-conscious meal and my belly is totally happy.

Did you totally crush this super simple mayo-free chickpea salad?
I want to hear about it!

💛 M