Hummus

Ingredients

Yields around one quart

• 1 cup dried chick peas (or two cans; if using cans, try to find "no salt added" to avoid making things too salty)
• 1/2 cup liquid from chick peas
• One head (~8 cloves) of Roasted Garlic
• Medium red bell pepper, roasted
• 2 tsp paprika
• 1 tbsp dried flaked maras biberi or aleppo pepper (recommended, but not required)
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp fine grained sea salt
• 5 tbsp (~1 lemon) fresh lemon juice
• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (if you can get your hands on it, Holy Land is great)
• 5 tbsp tahini

Directions

Preparing the Beans

Just soak a cup of dried beans at least overnight in a couple of cups of water. Drain them and throw them into a pot with enough water to just more than cover them (an extra inch or so seems to be good). Bring everything to a boil uncovered, and then cut the heat back to simmer partially covered for about an hour or an hour and a half (when the skins split easily they have a good texture).

When you drain them save the liquid and use that when blending the hummus.

Bell Pepper

Scorch the skin off of the bell pepper over flame or under a broiler (optional — I leave the skins on and notice no difference), and then roast the pepper:

To roast the pepper, put the cut pieces in a baking dish with about two tablespoons of oil and pop it into a 400°F (205°C) oven, stirring every 15 minutes, until the pieces are tender and slightly blackened on the edges, about 45 minutes.

Conveniently, this is the same temperature garlic is roasted at, so you can roast both at the same time. I like mine a little blackened on the edges, but you don't want to go too far, as bell pepper can pass from roasted with just a touch of char to burnt and sad pretty easily.

And Now for the Actual Hummus

1. Prepare the beans (or open canned beans).
2. Mix lemon juice and chickpea water
3. Whisk tahini and olive oil together
4. Add beans, roasted garlic, roasted pepper, and spices to food processor work bowl; process for around 15 seconds
5. Process for 60 seconds while drizzling in chickpea water and lemon juice mixture
6. Process additional 60 seconds
7. Process for two minutes, drizzling in olive oil and tahini mixture
8. Process additional three minutes
9. Garnish if you desire (minced garlic, capers, coarsely ground black pepper, and olive oil with a whole olive or three in the center for example).
10. Take to a gathering of some sort.
11. Watch the hummus evaporate.

Scrape sides of work bowl between processing runs if needed.

Notes

One time I decided to make hummus for folks and alas! I forgot to soak beans the night before. My strange friend came to the rescue with the equivalent amount of home prepared white beans and it was a good substitute (slightly different flavor, but the spices here really dominate). I used water from boiling dried tomatoes (slightly different recipe) as there was no fresh chickpea water on hand and it was delightful.

I've used cheap blenders, decent food processors, and a super-expensive blender to make this. It comes out adequately with most any equipment. You can just blend everything together at a moderate speed until the consistency is whatever you consider reasonably smooth, but processing in steps with a good food processor results in a slightly better texture.

I've done this with and without removing the skins, and I personally don't think it's worth the effort to remove the skins.

America's Test Kitchen Method

ATK suggests making an emulsion in several steps instead of throwing everything into the blender all at once. I ultimately integrated a modified versions of this into the recipe since it does result in an improved texture.

• mix chickpea liquid and lemon juice
  • ATK using 1/4 cup water per can of chickpeas, do that here and use 1/2 cup
• mix tahini and olive oil
  • atk is using 2tbp per can of chickpeas. keep at 2tbsp total for now.

1. Process all dry ingredients + roasted garlic and roasted peppres for ~15 seconds
2. With food processor on, blend in lemon and chickpea liquid over around 30s
3. Process additional minute
4. With food processor on, blend in olive oil and tahini over the course of around a minute. Process an additional three minutes.

Dry Beans

Trying 1 cup dry to sub for 2 cans. Should work fine since that's what I used to use a decade ago before I got lazy.

190g dry = 393g soaked = 447g cooked

Made a bit less hummus than two cans, if I had to guess I need another 150g cooked. Definitely need to measure drained can weight.

1 can drained = ? g

https://www.nigella.com/ask/using-dried-chickpeas says one can drained should be 250g, so I might only be 50g short. Felt like I was shorter though... next time do 1.5 cups dried beans and weigh everything again.

Attempt 2: 2020.06.07

300g dry beans (1.5 dry cups) = 617 g soaked = 728 g cooked and drained

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Last Modified: October 29, 2023