BBQ Chickpea Pizza

This BBQ chickpea pizza is perfect if you want a vegetarian pizza that’s a bit different, and absolutely full of smoky BBQ flavour.

I’m of the opinion that pretty much anything is better when served on pizza. If you love chickpeas slathered in BBQ sauce, adding pizza to the equation can only possibly be a good thing – so here’s a BBQ chickpea pizza!

Chickpea pizza

I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen chickpeas on a pizza before. I’d certainly never eaten chickpea pizza until I made this one. But thank goodness I decided to give it a try, because it’s excellent.

Since my baked bean pizza worked so well the other week, and lentil pizza works so beautifully too, I thought I’d try chickpeas on pizza – beans, lentils and chickpeas are all pulses, so they should all work equally well, right?

And they do! This BBQ chickpea pizza is so, so good.

Why put chickpeas on pizza?

There’s no denying that chickpeas don’t have a huge amount of flavour on their own. So why bother adding them to your pizza?

Well… lots of reasons:

• They’re the perfect little carrier for all that BBQ sauce
• They bring another texture to your pizza
• They make your pizza extra filling and hearty
• They’re good for you, so you can eat an extra slice guilt-free

The chickpeas add that perfect little je ne sais quoi.

Along with some red onions and cherry tomatoes, it’s a really yummy combination that’s a little bit different to anything I’ve had before.

How to make a BBQ chickpea pizza

First, you’ll need to start with a basic cheese and tomato pizza. I used a shop-bought pizza base, smeared it with tomato puree, and added a couple of nice big handfuls of grated cheese.

I used the pre-grated stuff (both mozzarella and cheddar) because it works really well on pizza, and it’s super low effort.

If you’re feeling ambitious, you could make your own homemade pizza base. Or if you’re pressed for time, use a naan bread pizza base – or you could even just begin with a shop-bought margherita pizza!

Next, the chickpeas!

BBQ chickpeas

To make the BBQ chickpeas, you just need to mix tinned chickpeas with BBQ sauce.

Yep, I never claimed this was a complicated recipe.

Use as much or as little sauce as you like. I tend to only like BBQ sauce in fairly small doses, so I didn’t go mad, but you can definitely be more heavy-handed if you’re a BBQ sauce lover.

Add the BBQ chickpeas to your pizza, along with some sliced red onion and some cherry tomatoes, and pop it in the oven until it’s all gooey and crispy and delicious.

As it cooks, all the toppings are essentially roasting, right there on top of the pizza.

Roasted onion – yum.
Roasted tomatoes – yuuum.
Roasted BBQ chickpeas – yuuuuum.

Not forgetting the gooey cheese underneath!

BBQ sauce on pizza

Here, it’s pretty common to use BBQ sauce on pizza, instead of the tomato sauce. But I didn’t want to do that, because I like tomato sauce, and I don’t love BBQ sauce enough to want it to be the only flavour on my pizza.

That’s why it works so well just coating the chickpeas in BBQ sauce, but still using regular tomato sauce underneath the cheese. It’s the best of both worlds!

If you’re a BBQ sauce fanatic, feel free to drizzle extra BBQ sauce over the top of your pizza, either before or after baking. Or just use it for dipping, like I did!

Love unusual pizzas? Try my creamy mushroom and brie white pizza!