Wondering what to do with Gram flour? This guide covers how to pick it, cook it, store it, and swap it, plus 8 recipes to put it to work.

What is Gram flour?

Gram flour is a fine, pale-yellow flour milled from dried split chickpeas. In Indian kitchens it goes by besan, and you will also see it labeled chickpea flour or garbanzo flour. It is naturally gluten-free.

Its taste is faintly nutty and earthy, turning savory once cooked. The flour from brown chickpeas is ground finer and tastes slightly more bitter than flour from the white chickpeas sold in Mediterranean shops. Both behave the same in a batter, where besan's real talent is binding and thickening.

Cooking With Besan

Raw gram flour tastes chalky, so it almost always gets cooked. Whisk it with water and spices into a loose batter and you have the base for Gram Flour Pancakes/Besan chillas, a savory pancake studded with onion and chili. Thinned further, the batter coats vegetables for pakora.

It is a workhorse binder. Because it sets as it heats, a spoonful holds spiced vegetable balls together in Peas Kofta Curry without any egg, and it thickens the yogurt gravy in Khatta Moong (Soured Lentils) so the sauce clings instead of breaking.

For a steamed snack, gram flour batter gives Instant Idli Dhokla its spongy, tangy crumb. When a recipe uses it raw in a dressing, toast the flour in a dry pan first; thirty seconds of heat strips the chalky edge and deepens the nutty flavor.

Pairings and Common Mistakes

Besan loves warm spices. Turmeric, cumin, ajwain, asafoetida, and fresh green chili all sit naturally in a besan batter, and it pairs just as easily with yogurt, spinach, onion, and potato.

The most common mistake is lumps. Gram flour clumps the instant it meets water, so add liquid gradually and whisk hard, or sift the flour first. A batter rested twenty minutes hydrates evenly and fries crisper.

The second mistake is underseasoning. Besan is bland alone and needs salt plus assertive spice to come alive, so taste the batter before it goes in the pan.

Substitutes

For frying and binding, plain chickpea flour from white chickpeas is the closest swap, used one for one; the result is a touch milder and paler. In a pinch, lentil flour or fine cornmeal can bind a batter, though neither matches the flavor.

For thickening a curry, a slurry of cornstarch or all-purpose flour will set a sauce, but you lose the nutty taste and the protein. Where besan is the star, as in a chilla or pakora, no substitute really stands in.

Buying and Storing Besan

Buy gram flour from an Indian or South Asian grocer, where it sells simply as besan and turns over quickly, rather than the pricier small bags in supermarket baking aisles. Good besan is uniformly pale yellow with no musty smell.

Chickpeas carry some natural oil, so the flour can go rancid faster than wheat flour. Store it airtight, away from heat and light, where it keeps about two to three months in the pantry. The fridge or freezer pushes it past six months and stops the oils from turning.

If it ever smells sharp or sour rather than nutty, throw it out.

Quick facts

In Chinese

克面粉

British (UK) term

Gram flour

en français

Farine de pois chiche

en español

Harina de garbanzos

Recipes using Gram flour

There are 8 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 8 recipes