Although I gave the hummus recipe a long time ago in this blog, it was a simplified recipe with ingredients that are easy to find in western countries. As many people have asked me for the authentic recipe, I give it below as it was provided to me by a Lebanese restaurant in Beirut. I just warn that it is a somewhat long process.
INGREDIENTS :
- 2 cups of dried chickpeas
- 1 tablespoon of baking soda *
- 6 tablespoons of tahini
- 5 tablespoons lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
- 1 teaspoon salt
- Cumin powder
- Sweet paprika
* Although the recipe they provided me included baking soda to add to the chickpea soak, it is an unnecessary addition unless soaked in very hard (high-lime) water. In addition, you have to be very careful, since if you add sodium bicarbonate, the soak should not last more than 8 hours since doing it for longer would alter the flavor. To avoid these inconveniences, I always recommend using bottled or filtered water.
First, we soak the chickpeas in at least 1 liter of bottled water. We left overnight.
The next day the chickpeas will have rehydrated. It is time to cook them. For this we can use tap water (at least three times the volume of chickpeas) and boil them for an hour and a half, approximately, without adding salt. After that cooking time we check the hardness and if they are tender - they should be able to be undone simply by pressing a little on them - they are ready.
We remove from the water - which we reserve - and let it cool. Once cold we put in the fridge for at least a couple of hours. From the cooking water that we have reserved, half a cup is also taken to the refrigerator, in the coldest part of it. If you have a glass blender capable of crushing ice, take that cooking water to the freezer. Then I explain why.
Once we have the chickpeas very cold, we place it in the blender glass and reduce it to a homogeneous paste without lumps.
Then we add the lemon juice, the tahini sauce and the oil, as well as a teaspoon of salt. Tahini is a paste that is made with sesame and that can be bought in large supermarkets or Arab-oriental food stores.
We give several turns until the ingredients are well integrated.
The hummus thus obtained will have a much paler color than what you are used to if you eat it in restaurants or buy it already made. This is due to the fact that industrial products carry natural colorants while in restaurants they use a trick that consists of crushing part of the cooking water, previously frozen, at the same time that we incorporate the lemon, oil and tahini. This will give a brighter color.
If the color theme is the same and you are only looking for the flavor, it will not be necessary to use frozen water. In this case, the cooking water that we have reserved will help us to make the hummus more liquid in case the resulting pasta is too thick.
We pour the chickpea paste into a bowl and in the center we make a small hole where we pour a little raw extra virgin oil. Also, if we want, we sprinkle a little ground cumin and paprika on top.
It is eaten with a flat plan, dipping it in a little oil from the center and pinching the hummus paste.
As you can see, an elaborate recipe that differs from the one previously given in this blog and that only contained chickpeas, lemon juice, oil and salt, due to the use of dried chickpeas (it is never actually made with previously cooked chickpeas) and the use of tahini, which gives it a very characteristic flavor.