Taste-Safe Rainbow Chickpeas: How to Dye Chickpeas with Food Colouring

Looking to switch things up? These rainbow dyed chickpeas are cost-effective, easy to prepare, and they can be reused again and again! Follow this easy recipe to make vibrant coloured chickpeas to use in sensory bins and sensory bottles.

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There are SO many cool sensory activities out there that it can be hard to decide which ones to try.

Play dough, slime, sensory bottles, sensory bins—where do you even start?

We have done a lot of sensory activities over the years, and personally, I recommend starting with dry sensory materials and building up an inventory that you can keep on hand for when you need it.

Coloured rice and coloured oats (or even plain rice and oats) are a great place to start, and they can be reused again and again. Just pour them into a bag—or, better yet, a sensory bin with a lid—and take them out when you’re in need a quick activity for your kids. Easy peasy!

Coloured chickpeas are another fun material to keep on hand, and as it turns out, they are SUPER easy to make. In fact, all you’ll need is vinegar and food colouring to create vibrant coloured chickpeas to add to your collection.

Rainbow chickpeas have quickly become a favourite in our house, and I hope your kids have as much fun with them as ours did!

Can You Dye Chickpeas with Food Colouring?

A lot of the recipes I found online stated that chickpeas dyed with food colouring didn’t have as vibrant a colour as those dyed with paint—but I disagree.

The chickpeas pictured in this article were dyed with food colouring and vinegar, and the colours look just as vibrant as chickpeas dyed with paint. You just have to do it the right way!

Are Dyed Chickpeas Really Taste-Safe?

Because these coloured chickpeas were dyed with food colouring and vinegar rather than paint, they are technically taste-safe, and toddlers won’t be harmed if they decide to lick them or pop one of them in their mouth.

That being said, uncooked chickpeas and other dried beans contain natural toxins that can cause food poisoning and digestive issues, so you shouldn’t eat them unless they’ve been cooked. This activity is truly taste-safe, not edible.

If your child is very young and keeps trying to eat these rainbow chickpeas (not just taste them), you may want to stick with canned chickpeas until they’re a little older, since those are pre-cooked.

Also, keep in mind that chickpeas are small and round, which makes them a choking hazard. So make sure to supervise adequately and use your judgement to determine whether your child is ready to play with these, or whether you should hold off until they’re a little older.

Required Materials

Here’s what you’ll need to order to colour chickpeas for sensory play:

• Dried chickpeas (I used ½ cup of chickpeas per colour, but you can make larger quantities if you like)
• Small Ziploc bags
• White vinegar
• Liquid food colouring (you can also use gel food colouring, but you’ll need to adjust the quantities)

Note: We chose to dye our chickpeas with vinegar because it makes the colour brighter and helps the dye set. That being said, if you don’t like the smell of vinegar, or if you don’t happen to have any vinegar on hand, you can achieve similar results by replacing the vinegar with water.

How to Dye Dried Chickpeas for Sensory Play (Step-by-Step)

1. Pour Chickpeas into Ziploc Bag

To make rainbow chickpeas, start by pouring ½ cup of dried chickpeas into 6 zip-top sandwich bags (one for each colour).

2. Combine Food Colouring and Vinegar

Pour 1 tablespoon of vinegar into a small bowl and add 25 drops of food colouring. Feel free to use several colours of food colouring to create the exact shade you want.

Note: You may be able to get away with using less food colouring depending on the brand of food colouring you use. Feel free to experiment with adding a little less to start with—you can always add more later.

3. Pour Coloured Vinegar into Ziploc Bag

Pour the coloured vinegar into the bag of chickpeas.

4. Spread Food Colouring Throughout

Seal the Ziploc bag and move the chickpeas around with your fingers in order to spread out the food colouring. This is a great tasks to hand off to your kids if they want to be involved in the process!

5. Add More Food Colouring (Optional)

My coloured chickpeas looked vibrant enough that I didn’t feel the need to add more food colouring.

But if you’re not happy with the way yours look, you can always open up the bag,  add a few more drops of food colouring and continue spreading the food colouring throughout the bag until you’re happy with the colour.

6. Let Chickpeas Dry

When you are happy with the colour of your chickpeas, lay them out on a plate or a baking sheet and let them dry. If it’s sunny outside, you can leave them out in the sun to make them dry faster.

If you’re letting all of the chickpeas dry on the same baking sheet, make sure you keep the colours separate. If different-coloured chickpeas touch while they’re still wet, the different colours will stain each other and the chickpeas won’t look as nice.

I put mine on the same baking sheet to save space, but made separate little piles for each colour.

Then, once they were relatively dry and I didn’t think the food colouring would mix, I spread them out to give them a chance to dry properly.

It worked well, but it probably took longer than it would have if I had just spread the chickpeas on separate baking sheets, so you may prefer to just keep them separate.

Once all of your rainbow dyed chickpeas are dry, it’s time to play! Our kids absolutely LOVED these—even more than the Rainbow Oats that they’d been playing with all week.

One of the fun things about dried chickpeas is that unlike dyed oats, they make fun sounds when shaken. You could definitely use these colourful chickpeas to make a fun musical sensory bottle once your kids get bored of sensory bins (or if you have young kids who aren’t ready for this sensory bin yet)!

Plus, these rainbow chickpeas are WAY less messy than rainbow oats or rainbow rice, because the pieces are much bigger and easier to sweep up. And while I don’t mind messy play, I’m all for any activity that won’t require me to spend a whole bunch of time cleaning when my kids are done playing.

Seriously, how gorgeous are those colours?!

Related Taste-Safe Sensory Bins

Looking for more taste-safe sensory play ideas for your toddler? Check out these articles:

• Rainbow Dyed Rolled Oats
• Taste-Safe Chickpea Foam
• Edible Cheerio Sand
• Taste-Safe Chia Seed Sensory Play
• Edible Yogurt Silly Putty
• DIY Tapioca Water Beads

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