Side dish: Hummus

We first started making our own hummus in July 2011. Making hummus fresh at home is really the way to do it! We often make roasted red bell pepper flavor and cilantro flavor. This last time, we made roasted red bell pepper flavor and regular. We got our recipe that we've been making for over a year from Pamela Salzmann. Goes great with Falafel!

Soaked and semi-shelled chickpeas

Regular hummus and roasted red bell pepper hummus

Ingredients:

3 cups cooked chickpeas, (if canned, drained and rinsed), liquid reserved*

3 garlic cloves

½ cup sesame tahini

4-5 Tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

6 Tablespoons chickpea liquid

1 teaspoon plus a pinch sea salt

Directions:

1. If you use dry chickpeas, cover in water and soak overnight. Add water as the chickpeas absorb it to keep them completely covered. After soaking, save soaking water. (You can use for boiling, but we always use fresh.) Transfer to a large pot and boil for an hour until you can squish the chickpeas between your fingers. Strain the chickpeas and allow to cool. When the chickpeas are cool, separate shells by shaking the peas in the strainer and pulling out loosened husks. Allow to cool completely before using.
2. Place all the ingredients in a food processor fitted with the steel blade and process until the hummus is smooth.  Taste for seasoning and texture.
3. For very smooth and creamy, let the food processor run for a few minutes.  Eat it immediately at room temperature, or refrigerate it. The hummus will thicken after it has been refrigerated.

For roasted red bell pepper hummus:

1. Add 1-2 teaspoons smoked paprika, a few dashes cayenne pepper and 1 large roasted, peeled and seeded sweet red bell pepper to Traditional Hummus ingredients in food processor.  Reduce lemon juice to 1 Tablespoon and sea salt to ¾ teaspoon.  Blend until thoroughly combined.  Taste to adjust seasonings.

For cilantro hummus:

1. Add 24 sprigs of cilantro and a few dashes of cayenne pepper to Traditional Hummus ingredients in food processor.  You can use either lemon juice or lime juice.  Blend until thoroughly combined.  Feel free to use more cilantro.

Other Notes:

• We always use dry chickpeas. For whatever reason, we always soak much more than we need. We have tried freezing our soaked and shelled chickpeas when we ended up with too many. I'll try to remember to update this post to let you know if using the frozen chickpeas works just fine.
• Shelling soaked chickpeas is not for the OCD. I can spend the entire afternoon shelling the chickpeas. Ryan has to pull me away from the task. 
• Keeps a couple weeks in a sealed container in the fridge.

• Original Recipe