The digest:

so I made hummus. It could have been better. It was still above average in edibility. It was easy to make it look pretty. I fed it to my friends, and they liked it.

The writer:

oh que so.

I’ve been having a love affair with my food processor. We don’t ever get creative, though. I know what I like, and I know I like to make a literal bucket of fresh salsa, hide in a corner, and use chips as a rapid conveyor belt to deliver that salsa goodness into my mouth hole like a pico de gallo crazed squirrel. And uh, also, I like to make creamy cilantro dressing. Which I pour over everything. EVERYTHING. You know, like the kind you get from El Pollo Loco that you could drink out of a cup?

Anyway, those are the two things my bored food processor usually makes. So I thought I’d surprise him a little (yah, food processor is a him. Anyone have any good name ideas?) and throw some hummus up in that bad boi.

I know chickpeas and garbanzo beans are the same thing in my head, but I had to make sure before I started. The internet confirmed it, and that a winning combo for some killer hummus didn’t seem too difficult.

I can’t recall for the life of me what blog I was on, but a hummus loving person out there wrote an in-depth blog about how hard it is to get your chickpeas just right. She wanted to achieve that perfectly creamy, fluffy hummus texture. But it wasn’t happening for her. She lamented that no matter how many attempts were made, her texture was off.

Ha, I thought. The same fate won’t befall me.

The same fate befell me.

And it’s actually super frustrating.

So I traversed to my local Sprouts and scavenged around until I found tahini, which until now I didn’t know was an actual existing thing. The one that I picked up said it was discontinued. Note to future self: don’t buy stuff that’s discontinued. 

Some recipes said you could make hummus without tahini, which is sesame seed oil, but to me they looked like shortcuts. All the best recipes called for it. Mine was still tahini, but it was clumpy. Eurgh. Oh well, it was all going into the processor.

So I got me my tahini and my chickpeas. I also picked up cilantro, parsley, a red pepper, garlic, and avocado. I looked at the lady at the grocery checkout and was like “Aren’t I a healthy, grown adult?” Except I didn’t say that, because that’s weird.

After transporting all those goodies home, I turned on the stove and boiled my chickpeas. The hummus obsessed lady (not me, the other blogger from earlier) said that this helped with the consistency. Does that mean my consistency would have been even worse without doing this?

The chickpeas were all good and boiled, so I put them in my processor and gave a few initial blends. Then I added in an entire lemon, and three (!!!) cloves of garlic. I thought this might be too much, but the recipe called for two, and it still almost wasn’t enough.

I dumped my clumpy tahini in there, added salt, and gave ‘er a whirl. 

No matter how long I blended, it was still thiccc. With three C’s. Yeah, THICCC.

I’m thinking my food processor might not have the blending power to create hummus as creamy as I want it. I also might need to try blending a smaller amount at each time. But yeah, even though it was tasty, it was slightly thicker and bumpier than the hummus you want to just eat with a spoon.

Oh well, I shrugged. And I blended in avocado, cilantro, and parsley to taste. And taste, it did. Taste good, that is.

I wish I had saved some regular hummus to blend a red pepper into, but all I had was the avocado and cilantro hummus. So then I threw an entire red pepper in there. That was my favorite dip by far. I wanted it to be like the roasted red pepper hummus from Trader Joe’s, but it was not meant to be. Yet.

This isn’t a wrap on the hummus story. I’m going to figure out how to make it good, and creamy, and be that crazy hummus lady. For now, I might continue to eat my salsa buckets and cilantro dressing everythings.

The camera:

Give these images a lil' click to enlarge!

The recipe:

I used variations to get to this recipe. You can adlib to taste as well.

This is the recipe I used for classic hummus:

14 oz (1 can) chickpeas

3 cloves of garlic (I like less. You can add more.)

¼ cup of tahini

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 Lemon

Salt and pepper to taste

Smoked paprika on top

I added one entire red pepper and half an orange pepper to the red hummus, and lime, cilantro, avocado, and parsley to taste in the green hummus.

The thick and thin:

How Good I Thought It Was: ✎✎

Prettiness: ✎✎✎✎

Difficulty: ✎✎ (I’d give it one, but to get it right, it’s hard.)

How Much My Friends Liked Eating It: ✎✎✎✎

How Close it Was to Restaurant Style: ✎✎

Would I Make Again: ✎✎✎

How Creative You Can Get: ✎✎✎✎

Cost: ✎