Saving Room for Dessert

Delicious easy-to-follow recipes for food lovers!

Home

Freaky Friday Roasted Garlic Hummus – Sarah’s Way

   |    5 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.

I have something to tell you.
I have a blog daughter. Well … I have an adopted blog daughter. I’m not sure why I’ve never told you this but thought it was time to formally introduce her. Sarah Pember is a bright, funny, smart, creative, energetic, lovely, cute and incredible blog daughter. No I’ve never actually met Sarah but I adopted her just the same.  Sarah is a full-time, real-life Foodie writing fascinating daily posts about her culinary adventures at The Smart Kitchen.
What does being a blog daughter really mean?  It means we email from time to time and comment on blog posts occasionally.  It also means she gets fudge at Christmas and is invited to visit if she ever comes to our part of the world.  Sarah lives in Texas, I live in Virginia.  I’m here for you Sarah – just saying – that’s what blog mom’s do.
 We recently exchanged emails discussing recipes and my desire to make homemade hummus. Sarah is the hummus queen and kindly wrote step by step instructions for me so I could successfully blog about my chickpea experience. Since Sarah is a former school teacher and seems to know what she’s doing, I followed her instructions to the LETTER!
Sarah has dedicated the entire month of September to her Culinary Bucket List on The Smart Kitchen.  She suggested that we do a Freaky Friday switch today where I blog her hummus recipe and she posts her first roasted chicken according to my recipe.  Be sure to LINK on over and check out her roasted chicken today!
Take it away Sarah!
How to Make Hummus
(Without Getting Crazy)

1. Obtain a can of garbanzo beans, also known as chickpeas. You can start with dried chickpeas if you really want to be an overachiever, but Alton Brown says that starting with dried garbanzos is really the mark of good falafel. He never said anything about hummus. And Alton Brown knows everything.

I should take a moment to address the issue of “Can it be hummus without garbanzo beans?” As hummus means garbanzo bean, my gut tells me NO. People will disagree. [I, in fact, had a 10-minute debate with a coworker about this.] I love a good white bean as much as the next girl (at least one without GI issues) but if you use a different bean…call it bean dip.

“But Sarah, can it be hummus without tahini?” Be still, little one. We’ll get to that.
I gathered my mystery basket ingredients together including canned Garbanzo Beans, olive oil, tahini, cumin, paprika, garlic and lemon.
2. Open your aforementioned can of chickpeas (which I am inclined to think is much more fun to say than garbanzo beans, but any word with a ‘z’ in it by nature is enticing for its potential use in Scrabble, so it’s good to keep “garbanzo” around as well), rinse them and drain them. [Please make sure you have put them in some sort of colander prior to attempting this. You laugh, but clear directions are crucial.]
Check and check!
2a. If you want to be an overachiever (which means you’ve now got 1 1/2 cups of previously dried chickpeas that you soaked yourself overnight), you’ll want to ‘shell’ the garbanzo beans, removing their little skin. Have I ever done this? Think really hard about THAT one and you’ll know the answer. Have I been tempted to? Of course. It sounds like a great way to distract me from wanted to munch on random food while watching TV. [It’s also supposed to make your hummus very creamy.]
 When Sarah wrote “if you want to be an overachiever” I knew I had to give this a try!  I never thought to remove the skin but enjoyed developing a technique to sort of squish the beans into the food processor while hanging on to the skin.  I did not want to be a slacker here and love a challenge.  The skins remind me a shrimp shells.  Who knew???

3. Into the food processor go the beans! Then, add lemon juice, salt, 2-3 cloves of garlic (minced) [if you’re fancy [slash] doing the “overachieving thing” and have roasted garlic, well…PLEASE use that]. A little paprika or cumin added here can be quite nice…just for a little extra special spice.

I have the naked chickpeas in the food processor.   They look like tiny butts!
First I added the juice of 1/2 a lemon.  I wasn’t sure how much to add but ended up juicing the whole lemon.  The tart lemon flavor really added a lot to the hummus.
I used a little salt and pepper but added more salt after tasting at the end. 
I would guess about 1/2 teaspoon to start.
Sarah threw down the gauntlet again about being an overachiever.  While I was skinning the chickpeas, I placed 4 cloves of garlic in a small oven safe dish, added a little salt and olive oil and roasted the garlic covered with foil at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes.  I always like doing the extra-credit work 🙂
4. The tahini question must now be faced: Ta-hini or NOT Ta-hini? I’ve only really used tahini once or twice, mostly because it’s a costly ingredient that, unless you can find it pre-packed in the bulk section of your local grocery store, might not be a good investment. [You’d think with the amount of hummus I make I would have figured out that it’s probably a good investment.] I must say, I have become a tahini convert. I don’t use much–1 or 2 Tbsp–but people are right, “It tastes more like hummus!” when you use it.
I decided to do the tahini!

5. After all of those flavorings, process away! Scrape the sides once or twice [make sure the food processor is turned off] and keep going until everything is pretty well incorporated.

I added the cumin, paprika, roasted garlic and the tahini.
 Processing ….
scraping and processing.
6. Now comes the oil issue. Some people like REALLY smooth hummus. Some like it chunky. I fall into the “club of chubs” and a thick, chunky hummus is fine with me. However, having recently played around with drizzling in just a little olive oil while the processor is running, I must say…I kind of like it. Just make sure you go easy on it at first…you still want to taste the chickpeas.
I like olive oil and I like creamy so I drizzled in about 2 tablespoons good quality extra virgin olive oil.
 Creamy, smooth, and yummy!  I gave it a taste and added a bit more salt, paprika and cumin.
 Sarah also mentioned that I can play around with the flavors so I added a few shakes of hot sauce and believe it was near perfect!
 Hummus can be served with vegetables, as a spread on a sandwich or with chips as a dip!

That’s pretty much it. I mean, once you’ve mastered the basic recipe you can mess around and get crazy with your seasoning and additions and flavored hummi [plural form of hummus…maybe]. Good luck…and may garbanzo be with you.

Sarah Pemberhttp://thesmartkitchenblog.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~
This was such fun. I guarantee I’ll be first in line if Sarah ever writes a cookbook. Her recipes are healthy, fun, easy and tasty, spiced with a bit of her wonderful humor!
Thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope you all have a terrific holiday weekend and come back to see the sinful pie I have planned to cook up for you.  It’s a Crisco contest winner and I’m excited to see how it turns out.
Thanks again Sarah – I LOVE the hummus and the Freaky Friday exchange was a blast!  Hope your roasted chicken was everything you hoped for and more!
Tricia

 

FREE EMAIL BONUS

Weeknight Dinners Made Easy
Tips & recipes for delicious meals...no matter your skill level

You may also like these

Savory Winter Vegetable Cobblerchocolate wafer cookie stack cakesoverhead shot of salad and dressing on a platecherry-apple salad with homemade creamy feta dressingOverhead view of a platter of peanut brittle candyPeanut Brittle RecipeChocolate Sandwich Cookies
Previous Post:
Next Post:

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

5 Comments

Weeknight Dinners Made Easy

FREE EMAIL BONUS

Tips & recipes for delicious meals...

no matter your skill level!