Hummus: The quintessential chickpea recipe

I guess you know what hummus is: that delicious chickpea paste that is seasoned in different ways, very traditional in Arab culture.

Well, stay tuned with this hummus that I’m going to show you today. It is a very simple hummus recipe, without special ingredients, but the detail of the smoke gives it a flavor so particular and so rich that it is worth cooking with it in the next bite.

The best and most traditional thing when we talk about hummus is to serve it with pita bread (Arabic bread) and not spread it, but collect the hummus directly with the bread , making a kind of little stick. Well … I see that this is very difficult to explain so you can eat with cookies like me.

In my case, what I like the most about hummus is that it is a dish that we can use almost on any occasion as a starter. We can have it in the fridge for a few days, and it doesn’t matter if we’re going to have pizza or meat for dinner, it’s always there for a snack before the main course.

About the smoked hummus recipe

save me the redundancy

As I told you above, the only detail that differentiates this recipe from the traditional one is smoking. Therefore, in the event that you want a non-smoking hummus, you will simply have to skip the step of adding the liquid / solid smoke ingredient to the preparation.

To give the smoky flavor to the hummus I used solid smoke (this phrase could be a tongue twister). It is a powder that is impregnated on the surfaces of the food and gives the characteristic smoky flavor.

Exam question: If smoking is a long-standing, complex procedure, which generally takes firewood from different trees and even a very long tube underground that I once wanted to put in my mother’s house and she took me out carp: isn’t it? politically incorrect to “imitate” the taste with a powder who knows what it has?

Ehhh, no. Not really. It happens that solid (or liquid) smoke is healthier than the old smoking process, since we are not literally eating the product of combustion, something that is very harmful. Until recently, solid smoke was only found in professional kitchens but brands began to draw lines for the domestic kitchen (aka lo pibe).

For this hummus recipe I used San Giorgio’s solid smoke, which is made from toasted carob flour. I liked the result. It is soft and allows to dose correctly, to go testing quantities without going overboard.

Professor, what if I don’t have the magic powder? If you don’t have it, you can make this hummus anyway, it will be delicious. It will be a roasted garlic hummus and not a smoked hummus. You will not be able to use the phrase of redundancy, yes.

Ingredients

those with a traditional hummus + smoke

• 1 cup of cooked chickpeas (can be a can)
• 4 large or 6 small garlic cloves
• 2 tbsp. tahini (click here to see how to make homemade tahini, it is very easy and richer)
• 3 tbsp. lemon juice
• 3 tbsp. of water
• 1 tsp. solid smoke powder
• Good olive oil
• Salt and pepper
• Peppers

Step-by-step hummus recipe

the chickpea dish par excellence

1. To start with the recipe we are going to put the garlic, with the peel, in a roasting pan. Puncture them so they don’t explode. Roast them over medium heat for about 15-20 minutes.
2. After peeling the garlic, there will be a paste. If any part of the interior is burned, which is common, remove it. Leave only the garlic paste without burnt parts so as not to add unwanted flavors to our homemade hummus.
3. Put in the glass of the processor or mini pimmer all the ingredients except the water: chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice, tahini, solid smoke, salt and pepper. Crush. Add the water until the desired consistency is achieved. The traditional should be like a smooth paste, but remember that this is to taste and you can achieve a hummus with the consistency you prefer.
4. Rectify salt and we have a traditional hummus ready to take to the table.
5. In the case that we want a smoked hummus, we only have to add the amount of solid or liquid smoke.
6. Always serve with olive oil and paprika on top.