Quickly Achieve All-Day Flavor With This Italian Pressure-Cooker Chickpea and Pork Rib Stew

There are enough Italian bean stews out there to make you wonder when Italians find the time to eat so much pasta. Within this broad category of hearty Italian bean and legume soups and stews is a sub-genre that focuses on the humble but deeply flavorful chickpea. The most famous example is probably pasta e ceci—which, it’s worth pointing out, partly helps answer the pasta question. But pasta e ceci is just the beginning. I’ve eaten versions with tripe, with cuttlefish and octopus, and even with just the chickpeas alone, a pared-down example that helps prove just how flavorful chickpeas are when cooked well.

This recipe is another to add to the list, pairing chickpeas with pork ribs and tender nubbins of potato for a hearty and warming bowl that’s a meal unto itself. And, by taking advantage of the quick-cooking powers of a pressure cooker (such as an Instant Pot), it’s possible to make this stew in a couple of hours instead of slowly braising it on the stovetop for the better portion of a day, which is what would otherwise be required here since it relies on dried chickpeas, one of the longest-cooking of all legumes.

Could you use canned chickpeas in this recipe? Sure, that’d shorten the cooking time even more, though you’d still need to get those ribs tender, so it doesn’t cut down on cooking time all that much. Beyond that, though, dried chickpeas simply make a superior stew, and that’s especially important in such simple preparations as this one.

Using dried beans instead of canned is one of the culinary hills I’m willing to die on. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the convenience of a canned bean, nor that I’m eternally opposed to using them—I will sometimes rely on their undeniable convenience. But as a lifelong bean cook who trained under Cesare Casella, the Tuscan chef and one of the world’s foremost experts in bean cookery, I am adamant that, when cooked properly, dried beans are worlds better than canned, as is the liquid they’re cooked in, which is an element of extreme importance in a stew like this, given the liquid is the brothy base of the whole thing.

Thankfully, with the help of a pressure cooker, using dried beans is hardly an inconvenience. I have just a few technical points I want to share that help explain what makes this recipe so good. Pay attention to these details and I’d wager this will become one of those in-rotation weekly recipes for many of you. It, or some variant of it, sure is for me.

Dried Chickpea Cooking and Timing

This recipe is built on the foundation of beautifully cooked dried chickpeas and the flavorful broth they produce. There’s more to know about this than it might seem at first glance, and how attuned you are to the details here will make or break a recipe like this.

The Question of Soaking

The only thing that undermines my claim that this is a relatively quick recipe is the eight-hour soak I’m calling for in the recipe steps. I’m going to level with you: I have cooked this recipe, and ones like it, many times in a pressure cooker without soaking first. You, too, could skip that step.

I included it for a reason: It is an insurance policy against firm or unevenly cooked chickpeas. Those undesirable results can happen a few ways. First, not all dried chickpeas are the same—some are larger, some smaller, and in my many years of experience I’ve found that the time it takes for the chickpeas to simmer until fully softened can vary quite a bit. If the dried chickpeas are old, they also are prone to cooking more unevenly, with some breaking down into a mush while others in the pot are still firm and chalky. So while I know that this recipe can work without the soak, but I don’t know that it will always work without the soak. Get me? So if we skip that step, we might run into trouble.

This is especially true in this recipe, where we’re juggling two different needs: The imperative to fully cook the chickpeas, and the need to fully cook the ribs without turning them to total mush. Because we’re working in a pressure cooker that seals itself for the duration of the cooking time, we’re trying to strike a balance between their respective cooking times, such that when you open the cooker back up after depressurizing it, the chickpeas are soft enough and the ribs, while falling-off-the-bone tender are not destroyed beyond recognition. Based on my tests, this recipe’s 40-minute high pressure cooking time is the sweet spot for that, but soaking the chickpeas first will help guarantee that.

As an additional insurance policy, I’ve added a step in the recipe in which you have the option to remove the pork ribs from the cooker and then return the chickpeas alone to high pressure for an additional bit of time, just in case they need it. I don’t think in most cases this will be necessary, but I wrote it in just in case. Do it if you have to, but with the soak (and the judicious use of some baking soda and salt), I really don’t think almost anyone will ever have to.

The Power of Salt and Baking Soda

So, about that baking soda and salt. They are yet another insurance policy designed to deliver proper chickpea doneness, and I use them in both the soaking solution and the cooking pot. For a long time, cooks were instructed in no uncertain terms to never add salt to the bean pot until the end of cooking. This, as we’ve shown on Serious Eats many many times over the years, it utterly untrue. Salt, and specifically the sodium in both salt and baking soda, helps dried beans cook more quickly and evenly.

It works via a displacement reaction in which sodium ions in the solution replace calcium and magnesium in the beans. That, in turn, allows the natural pectin in the beans to dissolve more rapidly with clear beneficial results. If you’re curious to learn more about how and why this happens, or for further experimental proof, I direct you to Nik Sharma’s great article on the topic of bean brining we published some time ago.

For those worried about the quantity of sodium in the recipe, I’ll just point out that most of it goes down the drain with the brine water, and the chickpeas are subsequently rinsed. I do add some more salt and baking soda to the cooking water (you know, further bean-softening insurance), but if you do the overnight brine you could also skip some of that; if you don’t do the overnight soak in a brine, I’d recommend increasing the baking soda in the cooking water to 1 teaspoon. Don’t omit all the sodium though—you do want some salt in the pot from the start to ensure your beans come out not only tender but well seasoned throughout.

Use Aromatics

Salt in the cooking pot is one way to avoid blandness in the chickpeas, but it’s not the only one. You need aromatics. I almost never cook any beans without something in the pot to layer additional flavor on top of what the beans themselves offer, but in a stew like this, we need to be more heavy-handed in the aromatics department to avoid a one-dimensional stew.

Here, those aromatics come in the form of minced onion and celery, some crushed cloves of garlic, and a nice big sprig of rosemary, which has a woodsy, piney flavor that pairs naturally with earthy chickpeas. To develop their flavor further, I sauté them in the cooker pot after searing the ribs (heads up: the Maillard reaction of searing the meat adds another layer of flavor development here!) before briefly cooking some tomato paste (umami alert!) into it and then adding the chickpeas, fresh water, salt, and baking soda. They are all key to a full-flavored stew despite its minimal ingredient list.

Go Soft…Very Soft

You probably already picked up on this from everything I wrote above, but I want to stress the point: You want the chickpeas to be very tender. One of the biggest mistakes I see new bean cooks make is undercooking the beans, and it ruins almost any dish, but especially one like this. How soft is soft enough? Here’s the test: You should be able to crush a chickpea to a soft and tender mush merely by pressing it with your tongue against the roof of your mouth. If that doesn’t happen, they’re not ready.

Don’t worry too much about overcooking the chickpeas, they can break down in this particular recipe and still be delicious. Frankly, a little melting of the chickpeas into the broth is desirable, so don’t fear that result.

The Granny-Approved Art of Perfect Stew Potatoes

So much to say just about the chickpeas, but getting the lumps of potatoes perfect is also an art. The best trick I ever learned for this was taught to me by a Spanish farmer I was working for many years ago, and it falls firmly into the bucket of Granny-style cooking methods. It yields the absolute best potatoes in soups and stews.

The trick is to forget anything you might have learned about “proper” knife skills. We will not be doing a perfect dice. We will not produce cubes that could be mistaken for rolling dice. That is not the goal. Actually it’s quite the opposite: We are going to use a paring knife to break irregular chunks of potato off into the stew. Irregular is the operative word here, and in this context it’s a good thing.

We want to break off pieces that have thin, jagged edges, generally thicker centers, and a width that is different from the length (or depth or whatever dimensions you want to think about). The potatoes go into the pot after the pressure-cooking stage, since they would turn to mist if cooked with the chickpeas and pork at high pressure, and instead get a brief simmering period with the chickpeas after pressure cooking just until the potatoes are perfectly tender, the chickpeas smushingly soft, and the stew seasoned just right.

The irregular chunks of potato work so well specifically because of that irregularity. As they cook, the thinner edges of potato cook through rapidly and slough off, thickening the stew slightly with their starch, while the thicker portions cook less quickly and thus remain as perfect rounded-off nubbins.

Garnishes are Not Optional (Sorta)

When it’s finished, this simple but deeply flavorful stew may seem more or less done, but please don’t ignore the garnishes. You don’t have to add the cheese if you don’t want to (though it is very good), but the fresh black pepper and glug of olive oil are, to me, essential components in a stew like . It’s just not the same without them.

In a large bowl, combine chickpeas with 4 tablespoons (36g) kosher salt and 2 teaspoons (10g) baking soda. Cover with 3 quarts (3L) cold water, stirring to dissolve salt and baking soda. Let stand at room temperature overnight. Drain and rinse beans thoroughly.

Season pork ribs all over with salt and pepper. In an electric multicooker (such as an Instant Pot), heat olive oil using the sear or sauté function until shimmering. Add ribs and cook until browned on 2 sides, about 10 minutes total. Transfer ribs to a plate.

Add onion, celery, and garlic and cook, stirring and scraping, until softened and any browned bits on bottom of cooker have dissolved, about 5 minutes. Stir in tomato paste and cook for 1 minute.

Add drained chickpeas, rosemary sprig, pork ribs (and any accumulated juices, and 8 cups (2L) water (this should be enough to cover the solids). Stir in remaining 1/2 teaspoon (3g) baking soda and a pinch of salt. Seal cooker, bring to high pressure, and cook at high pressure for 40 minutes.

Depressurize cooker using quick-release valve. Carefully remove pork ribs and transfer to a plate; discard rosemary sprig. If chickpeas are still noticeably firm at this point, return to high pressure and cook for an additional 15 minutes until fully softened (we did not find this necessary during recipe development and testing, but not all chickpeas cook as quickly as others).

Add potatoes and simmer, uncovered, until potatoes and chickpeas are very tender, about 25 minutes. If stew is too thick at this point, thin slightly with additional hot water. Season to taste with salt and return pork ribs to pot to warm through. Ladle into individual bowls and top with a generous drizzle of olive oil, some freshly ground black pepper, and a sprinkle of cheese. Serve.

Notes

Ask your butcher to cut the ribs in half through the bones and to separate them. If you don’t have a butcher who can do this, simply divided the whole baby back ribs into individual ribs; the stew will just have larger pork pieces in it.

Special Equipment

Electric multi-cooker, such as an Instant Pot

Make-Ahead and Storage

The finished stew can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 5 days. Reheat, thinning with small amounts of water if necessary, before serving.