What’s the secret to making brilliant hummus, and are there any variations to try?
Jenny, Birmingham
“As there are so few ingredients in hummus, everything matters,” says Itamar Srulovich, whose latest venture, Honey & Co Daily, opens this month. “You have some easy wins: juicing the lemon yourself, fresh garlic, and you can buy good tahini now.” Where it “gets a bit murky” is the chickpeas. “It’s hard to find good ones – it took us five years to find our supplier, and if you’re that dedicated, we need to talk.”
Jarred chickpeas are a good (albeit pricey) option if you’re in a rush. “They’re smooth, salty, and produce amazing hummus,” says Noor Murad, co-author of OTK Extra Good Things. However, if time isn’t an issue, Murad and Srulovich recommend dried, which, of course, require soaking in water and, for Murad, bicarb. “They need to double in size,” Srulovich says, and some chickpeas will do this faster than others. “It’s a bit of an oxymoron but good, fresh dried chickpeas will be ready in two to three hours.” Once drained, Murad cooks her chickpeas in fresh water, with more bicarb (“it helps the skins separate from the chickpeas”) and ground cumin seeds. “It gives a nice, subtle flavour,” she says, but admits not everyone agrees (Srulovich included). Heat-wise, Srulovich suggests a rapid boil: “let them bubble nicely for 20, 30, or 40 minutes (depending on the batch of chickpeas), until really soft.” And keep skimming the foam off.
You’ll also want to scoop up and discard the skins, which will float to the surface – “it’s quite meditative,” Murad assures. Then, it’s imperative that the chickpeas are warm when blending: “It helps create really smooth hummus,” says Murad, who adds some warm chickpea cooking water to the food processor, too. “Use a generous amount of the best quality tahini – if I have 500g cooked chickpeas, say, that could need anywhere between 100g and 180g tahini. Start with less and see if it needs more.” A crushed garlic clove (again, “taste to see if you want more”) also goes in, along with a few ice cubes. “They aerate the hummus and create this amazing, smooth texture; when I worked in a kitchen in Bahrain, I saw a Syrian chef put ice cubes in the hummus machine and I’ve never looked back.”
Srulovich, meanwhile, uses a stick blender to whizz his chickpeas and cooking water, which should “just cover the chickpeas”. And don’t be impatient: “this takes longer than you think; once completely smooth, another four minutes”. Srulovich also adds garlic, lemon juice, salt, and enough tahini that it “seizes up”, then tops with a sprinkling of cumin. Murad, meanwhile, drizzles her hummus with olive oil and adds something textural, which might be extra cooked chickpeas, pine nuts fried in paprika oil, or fried garlic chips. But the possibilities are (almost) endless. “This is where you can go crazy,” Srulovich says, “but be really picky about what goes in your hummus.”
As for variations, the Arabic and Hebrew word for chickpeas is “hummus”, so this isn’t really the place for such things. “Any bean whizzed up is delicious, but it’s not hummus,” Murad insists. “I never thought I was a purist with food, but hummus is my exception.”
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