How Long to Cook Garbanzo Beans/Chickpeas
Depending on how quickly you want to eat them, it can take between two hours and 13 hours to make garbanzo beans, also known as chickpeas, though the active cooking time is closer to an hour. That's because you need to soak dried garbanzo beans before you can cook them. The traditional, slower method is to soak them in a pot of water overnight, but you can speed this up by bringing the pot of beans and water to a boil, then turning off the heat, covering the pot, and leaving them for an hour. Either way, when the chickpeas are done soaking, you'll need to drain and rinse them, then boil them in a pot of water for about an hour.
Of course, you can also take a shortcut and buy garbanzo beans in a can. It only takes about 3 minutes to heat up canned chickpeas in the microwave or 5 minutes to cook them in a saucepan with a little bit of water.