Simply Delicious: Hummus – Chickpea Spread
The trick is in the details that can raise your hummus from simply pureed chickpeas to wow! The most important step, of course, is to pressure cook the beans yourself instead of using canned, then…
… you want them to cool them before adding the other ingredients so each addition will taste fresh. Finishing with fresh herbs, your best olive oil and a sprinkling of paprika will make you want to make a meal of it.I served this with lightly warmed Piadine, an Italian flat bread, but warmed pitas would be the best accompaniment. Flour tortillas or bread crostini are great substitutions.
Pressure Cooker Recipe: Hummus -Chickpea dip
1 cup dried Chickpeas, soaked or quick-soaked 1/2 bunch Parsley, chopped
Either soak the chickpeas overnight (changing the soaking water twice), or quick-soak them (about 10 minutes). Rinse the chickpeas and put them in your pressure cooker. Cover with about 6 cups (or 1.5 L) of water. Add two crushed garlic cloves and a Bay Leaf. Close and lock the lid and pressure cook for 15 minutes at high pressure. When time is up, open the pressure cooker with the natural release method – move the pressure cooker to a cool burner and wait for the pressure to come down on it’s own (about 10 minutes). Drain the chickpeas, reserving all of the cooking liquid – you will need some of this to add back when pureeing the chickpeas and you can use the rest as a stock for your next risotto. If you like, you can pull out some whole chickpeas to reserve for the garnish. Leave the chickpeas to cool, and pick out the Bay Leaf. Pour chickpeas into food processor, or puree with a stick blender or potato masher. Add back 1/2 a cup of cooking liquid along with Tahini, lemon juice, cumin and 1 or 2 fresh garlic cloves (depending on your preference). Puree to mix and see if the consistency is creamy enough. I slowly added almost an additional extra cup of cooking water after pureeing everything together because I wanted the puree to be just one step out of “pasty” going towards “creamy” without it getting “runny.” When you have reached the right consistency, add salt to taste and puree again to mix well. Place either in individual serving dishes or communal dipping bowl. Make a nice deep round groove in the middle with a spatula and pour a generous helping of your best olive oil. Sprinkle with paprika and fresh parsley, a few whole cooked chickpeas and serve. Serves 4-6
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Oh, I love the addition of cumin and paprika!
I just started making my homemade humus with pressure cooked chickpeas — there is really NO comparison to using canned beans! They are so delicate, creamy and delicious! I recently learned a trick: soak chickpeas for one hour in baking soda, then rinse extremely well. EVEN creamier!
I made some chickpeas in my pressure cooker a few months ago and was impressed by how delicious they tasted compared with canned chickpeas. I’ve been thinking about making hummus with some ever since then. Thanks for sharing this recipe!
this looks fantastic!!! wow. i love using a pressure cooker, going to try this…~ and love the idea of adding a bayleaf for flavor!!
Try adding a tablespoon or two of olive oil when you’re pureeing the chickpeas. Fat is a flavor vehicle and I find that this definitely enhances the flavor.
To me, the basic hummus recipe is just a starting point. “Obvious” changes that spring to my mind are changing the beans; try black beans instead of garbanzo beans, try balsamic vinegar instead of lemon juice, a miso of your choice instead of salt (for that nice umami flavor http://goo.gl/3LKq), etc.
I made some with black beans and then added some pickled jalapenos when I was pureeing the beans, and also some cilantro. By that time it was more of a south of the border bean dip than a hummus although it still had the tahini.
The tahini and cumin are a constant. I’m not too wild about paprika though; maybe I have a bad batch; mine tastes sort of musty. I keep my spices in the freezer; maybe paprika doesn’t like that?
Thanks for the recipe, but the ingredients call for 3-4 garlic cloves and you only give instructions to put 2 in the PC with the peas. If people don’t catch that, their hummus will be lacking that essential garlic bite that comes from adding fresh garlic into the food processor when whirring it all up. I put the garlic into the processor first, to make sure it’s chopped fine and well-distributed. Also I second lumpy’s suggestion to add olive oil when blending.
JL, I try not to use the baking soda. The texture is great but the nutritional value is decreased, somewhat. If I can get my kids to eat something brown it’s already a bit of a miracle! The fact that for them it’s a dip is a great help.
Nicole, please come back to tell me how you like it! Also read the comments for some great variations and additions!
Welcome Junia! The Bay leaf serves a double purpose. It also decreases the “gassyness” of the beans for those who don’t eat beans very often.
Lumpynose, great suggestion. I kept it out because I wanted this recipe to be low-fat and high-flavor. Plus, for me the puddle of oil on top is just a dream. It has to be the GOOD stuff!
Anonymous, thanks for the catch and tips. I have updated the recipe to include the last, crucial raw clove or two.
Ciao,
L
Ciao,
The best and healthiest snack love it!
Cook’s Illustrated, always a good resource for improving recipes through a change in preparation instructions or technique, created a superb recipe for what it calls restaurant-style hummus. I’ve made it many times, always to rave reviews. It makes a hummus with a beautifully light, silky-smooth texture rather than the sometimes coarse, dense texture of some other hummus recipes. Their recipe is a nice balance of typical hummus ingredients: chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, garlic, and olive oil. You’ll see that Laura’s recipe calls for slightly different combination. That’s the beauty of hummus, you can add more or less of most ingredients to suit your own taste preferences.
To get that light silky texture, their technique is key rather than a particular set of ingredients (and I’ve found their technique really makes a difference). The ingredients, as you’ll see, are pretty standard and you can probably adjust them to your liking. I have made their hummus using this technique and the result is indeed, hummus with a beautifully light, silky texture.
CI Restaurant-Style Hummus – makes about 2 cups
3 T. fresh lemon juice
¼ C. water
6 T. tahini, stirred well
2 T. extra-virgin olive oil, plus some extra for drizzling
14 oz. of cooked chickpeas, preferably cooked from scratch in the pressure cooker according to Hip’s instructions (however a can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed can be used). Reserve a few chickpeas to garnish finished dish.
½ t. of minced garlic or more if desired
½ t. of table salt
¼ t. of ground cumin
Pinch of cayenne
1 T. minced fresh cilantro or parsley leaves.
1. Combine lemon juice and water in a small bowl.
2. Whisk together tahini and 2 T. of olive oil in another small bowl.
3. Process chickpeas, garlic, salt, cumin and cayenne in a food processor until almost fully ground – about 15 seconds. Scrape down bowl with spatula.
4. With processor running, add lemon juice-water mixture in a steady stream though the feed tube. Scrape down bowl again and continue to process for about a minute.
5. With processor running, add oil-tahini mixture in a steady stream though the feed tube and continue to process until hummus is smooth and creamy – about 15 seconds, scraping down bowl as needed.
6. Transfer hummus to serving bowl, sprinkle reserved chickpeas and cilantro or parsley over the surface. You can eat it immediately, but if you allow the flavors to meld by allowing it to sit covered, for a half hour it will taste better.
7. If texture is too thick when you’re ready to serve the hummus, you can mix in about 1 T. of warm water. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle a bit of paprika on top and serve with pita chips, or celery and carrot sticks.
This is very similar to my hummus recipe but you use much more water when blending, which sounds like it works well.
Adding a strip of kombu (sea weed) to the bean cooking pot adds flavor (from the minerals and natural sodium) and texture to the beans,too. I like to throw in a couple of garlic cloves during the pressure cooking process so that there is the mellow garlic flavor as well as the raw.
As usual, great photos.
lumpynose, paprika needs to be lightly sweet and peppery – not musty! Definitely try to get your hands on a fresh batch. Storing your spices in the freezer might cause condensation to form when you pull them out. A cool dark place should suffice!
Sigrid, thank you for sharing this technique I really enjoy reading everyone’s “spin” on Hummus.
Cook’s Illustrated and Jill’s recipes use more tahini, a spritz of spice and cilantro while I get the heat and pep from the fresh garlic and use flat Italian parsley. Also the ratios are quite different. I tried to be true to the ingredients you would find in the Middle East to get that authentic flavor – though in the end, every recipe should be adapted to local ingredients, spices and flavors!
Ciao,
L
My hummus is very similar to yours and does not use more tahini but the same amount.
2 cloves garlic
1 1/2 to 2 cups pressure cooked garbanzo beans, liquid reserved
2 tablespoons sesame tahini
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin (optional)
1 pinch of cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon reduced sodium tamari or Bragg liquid amino acids
2 to 4 tablespoons water
I have been teaching people how to make it for years and it’s always a hit. Anyway that you make hummus – it’s wonderful and people always appreciate it.
These recipes don’t look anything alike, ladies.
They both have garbanzo beans and tahini. Welcome to Hummus!
Gosh, it’s amazing how many little tweaks and additions or subtractions there can be to plain old hummus. We now have three similar though somewhat different recipes for hummus here – Laura’s, Jill’s and Cook’s Illustrated’s. We all have lots of ideas for tweaking our own recipe if we already have one, or ideas to try if we’ve never made hummus before. I’ve only made hummus using chickpeas/garbanzo beans cooked from scratch once and even at that I didn’t use a pressure cooker. I’m definitely going to cook the beans in my PC the next time and I’m going to use a bay leaf and garlic cloves as Laura suggests. If I had any kombu, I’d throw a strip of that in too as Jill does. I do have some Bragg Liquid Amino Acid though I’ve never used it. I’ll give that a try instead of tamari. I love the hummus I already make using the CI recipe and technique…but there’s always room for improvement! Thanks for the ideas ladies. I always have liked “playing with my food ☺.
I love hummus but have never tried to make the chickpeas. This must really take up to another level… !
When I make hummus I use a whole bag of garbanzos to make 4 servings, 3 of which go in the freezer. I throw in an 1/2 onion 1 carrot and 1 celery to flavor the cooking liquid (water) and it all ends up together in the food processor along with the other ingredients.
(I make 2 serving at a time of your pate and then freeze one for later also!)
Check out my latest blogpost on savory steel cut oats. I would love to share it with your readers.
Thanks.
I just made this recipe-and I, too, am now a convert to PC’ing the garbanzo beans. WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!!! I have an electric PC and I just took off 3 minutes to compensate for the longer time it takes to reach the correct temp for “pressure.” Also enjoyed everyone’s little twists to this great dish.
LUUUVEE this site for recipes!!
Kate
Thanks for the recipe! I was mostly interested in the part of the recipe where you describe cooking the chickpeas in a pressure cooker. Being both new to the craft and having forgotten to soak the beans in the morning, I followed the quick-soak method in the pressure cooker along with the rest of the instructions.
The chickpeas turned out great but I had a few questions regarding the process:
1. Why is it necessary to quick-soak the chickpeas in 4 cups of water, then pour out the water and proceed to fill the pressure cooker with clear water? Can we not cook the chickpeas from the dry state straight into cooked by cooking for 17-20 minutes total as opposed to 2 mins on high pressure, cool-down, then 15 mins on high with clear water again?
2. Why is so much water required in the cooking process? I was cooking 2 cups of chickpeas which meant 12 cups of water. Since I have a smaller pressure cooker the required amount filled it to more than half the amount which is not recommended by the manufacturer. Having boiled chickpeas many times before I don’t remember ever using that much water so I cut it down to 4 cups per cup of chickpeas, and even after 15 minutes of pressure cooking there was still a healthy 5-6 cups left that did not evaporate. I think you could safely cut the water down to 3 cups per cup of dry chickpeas.
Great questions! You can absolutely pressure cook chickpeas from dry all the way through, but they actually take about 30 minutes instead of 20.
You throw away the cooking water in the quick-soak to discard the undigestble sugars (which cause gas) from the beans as you would during a normal, overnight, soak.
I like to use abundant water to ensure that the beans will plump-up as much as they can, then I use the rest (from the “official cooking” not the quicksoak) as stock for my next risotto.
Welcome and I’m so glad to hear of your pressure cooking success!
Ciao,
L
Great recipe! I used a total of 4 large garlic cloves, a bit more cumin and a pinch of cayenne. Will make again!