What to do when supermarkets stop selling kilogram bags of pulses

It's Summer and most Australians are not requiring large amounts of pulses anymore. Fortunately, chickpeas and lentils are still available in one-kilogram bags, thanks to their continued use by vegans and vegetarians. The rest are now available only in their 375g bags at most major supermarkets, if available at all.

So what to do when one kilogram of beans starts to cost almost as much as meat?

If you live near a major city, you should have access to Asian grocery stores (especially Indian and Turkish stores) that offer competitive prices by the kilo for pulses. I suspect once you get used to going there, you will choose to buy your pulses from them all year round. There is a significant improvement in price with many of the pulses we purchase $4 - $6 per kilogram.

The one exception is Borlotti beans. While these are generally in stock, they cost more, possibly because they are an Italian bean. In any case there are a dizzying amount of bean alternatives, including soya beans which make a great cow's milk alternative. If you have a policy of buying Australian products wherever possible, there are usually Australian made pulses available, such as Katoomba.

For those of us who have no alternative but to shop online, there are online Indian grocery stores. While these are also competitive, they are generally based near capital cities and have minimum orders typically $50 - $90. If you made one trip per month your "Indian online order" and included rice and spices you might get to a total of $50.00 but this is not an easy route to go on a small budget. And of course, there is the cost of shipment, which may blow the whole idea out of the water. In addition, in my attempts to contact these online stores, a few insisted on getting my personal details with continual spamming resulting in me unsubscribing before I had even placed an order.

If a local Asian/Indian/Turkish grocery store is not possible, check all of your local supermarkets. Some may continue to stock pulses in competitive sized packaging right through the summer. Especially the independent stores.

This leads me to my last suggestion. If you have access to a small independent supermarket, ask them if they would stock Katoomba or the larger sized pulse packaging from McKenzies for you. I have found my local independents happy to oblige and in return I switch to shopping at their supermarket more often. If enough readers do this, the independent supermarkets might just get the boost their greater flexibility deserves.

Photo: Yoav Farhi Unsplash.com