Hummus

This recipe works with dried chickpeas. If you soak and sprout them yourself that will taste nicer than canned chickpeas. It is also cheaper.

I got this recipe from a hummus chef I met at Burning Bär: Mishka, her real name is something else, in Hebrew, but I didn’t write that down.

Ingredients

This recipe will result in about 750 gr of hummus.

• 500 gr dried chickpeas
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3 cloves garlic
• 4 tbsp tahini
• 2 lemons
• 1 tbsp cumin powder/seeds
• 6 tbsp olive oil
• water (optionally)
• 2 tsp smoky paprika powder (optional)
• salt
• pepper

Tools

• Strong food processor
• Colander

Preparation

Put the chickpeas in a colander and rinse them real good. Then put them in a big cooking pan with lots of cold water. Then stir in one teaspoon of baking soda. Let the chickpeas soak for about 12 hours. A couple of hours more or less won’t matter.

Then put them in the colander again, rinse them real good again. We want to rinse all of the baking soda off of them.

Then put a wet kitchen towel (not a paper one) over the still slightly wet chickpeas. We want to let them sprout the tiniest bit. So make sure they’re exposed to some wind and to a bit of water. So now and again throw some water over them.

After they show their little white beginnings of sprouts we can start to cook them. Put them in a pan with a big amount of water. Make the water boil and then keep it just boiling. Take off the foam that comes off of the chickpeas. We want to boil them until they are super soft. You should be able to squeeze them between your fingers real easily. So after about 90 minutes of boiling try it out. If it’s not soft enough boil for another 30 minutes until you’re happy with the softness.

Once that is done, put them through the colander for the last time and rinse them a little bit.

Now comes the fun part. Take your food processor and add the garlic, lemon, cumin powder, olive oil, salt, pepper and smoky paprika powder but NOT the tahini. Process until you’ve got mostly small parts. Then add a third of the chickpeas, process. Keep adding more of the chickpeas until everything is in there. Now add all of the tahini, we add this the latest because the other ingredients mix better without it. Now we’ll work on consistency and taste. The hummus should not be too runny or dry. If it’s too dry add a little olive oil or water, then process. For taste add tiny amounts of salt, pepper, olive oil and process again until you’re happy.

This keeps about a week.