Hummus

Hummus Cooking Guide, by Ian McDowell

This guide provides an overview of the massive hummus making process, along with a recipe and step-by-step instructions based on my experience tuning this shift.

So You've Got a Hummus Shift

Congratulations! You're entering a brave new world of westernized middle-eastern food. Co-opers are passionate about their hummus, and getting it right is important. This guide will give you the tools you need to get it done.

First Steps

Hummus making is straightforward and fairly quick, but requires a little bit of planning.

Prepping the Beans

Your beans will cook faster (and possibly give your house-mates less gas) if you soak them prior to boiling. So let's do that.

Planning

Beans should soak for ~8-24 hours. Decide when you're going to be making hummus and plan ahead.

The Beans

Find a large food-safe container, with a lid - any of the larger size clear plastic tubs that live in the dish-room will be fine.

Add 8 cups of dry chick-peas/garbanzo beans (they're the same thing) to your container. Keep an eye out for small rocks - they're rare, but can and do show up once in a while.

Soaking

Add cold water until there is about three times as much water as beans. Beans will soak up a surprising amount of water, it doesn't hurt to give them extra.

Cover the beans with the lid, but don't seal it air-tight. The cover will prevent strange objects from entering your beans while you're away.

If you're soaking the beans for less than 12 hours, it's fine to leave them on a counter-top. I usually put them back in the corner by the double-sink in the kitchen.

If you're soaking the beans for more than 12 hours you should put them in the fridge. Otherwise the beans will start to ferment and make bad smells/tastes.

Cooking the Beans

You should cook the beans after you soak them.

Draining

Dump out the left-over water from soaking. Opinions conflict, but the soak-water may contribute to gas production in the gut. So why not toss it?

Transfer the beans to a large metal pot - make sure it's one with a lid. Fill with water such that there's about 2-3 inches of water over the top of the beans.

Keep your plastic container around, you'll use it again later.

Cooking

Put the pot on the stove, turn the flame up to medium/high (not all the way to the right, but close).

Put the lid on the pot. Set it slightly off-center so there's about a half-inch gap on one side. If you fail to leave this gap your beans may boil over and make a mess of the stove.

Walk away. I usually let the beans cook for 1-1.5 hours, unsupervised. If this is your first time, check in on the beans after fifteen minutes to make sure that the water isn't all boiling away, which could cause your beans to burn.

Making Hummus

Cool, this is the good part!

Drain the Beans (Save the water)

Put a strainer over the plastic container you set aside previously. Strain the beans over it, catching the water you dump off. Save this water, you'll use it in your hummus.

Return the beans to the pot, but make sure it's off the heat/stove.

Gather Supplies

Locate the following items:

Kitchen Tools

Sharp knife, I prefer non-serrated.

Cutting board.

Food processor. You'll need the base, the container that fits on top of the base, the spinning blade, and the rounded lid.

Measuring cups: 1 cup, 1/4 cup

Measuring spoons: 1 tsp, 1 tbsp

Long handled butter-knife, or equivalent implement for stirring tahini

Eight quart plastic container.

Food Things

4 medium red onions

1 head of garlic

1.5 containers of tahini

Extra virgin olive oil (regular if you can't find it)

Bottle of Brags Amino Acids

7 tsp salt

7 tsp cumin

3/4 tsp cayenne

Prep Work

Tahini

Tahini is to sesame seeds as peanut butter is to peanuts. And just like peanut butter, the oil separates. If you've just opened a new jar of tahini, you need to mix it thoroughly. I start by turning the tahini container over and letting it sit on its top for ~10 minutes while I prep my onions and garlic. Turn it back over, grab your long-handled knife, and open the sucker up. Stirring is a pain in the ass, but you want to make it as well mixed as possible. A thick paste will tend to stick to the bottom, which has most of the Tahini's nutty goodness. Focus on trying to scrape that off.

Onions

Cut off the ends of the onion.

Chop the onions in half.

Remove the outer peel.

Chop them in half again.

You now have peeled onion quarters.

Garlic

Peel the garlic. You'll need ~21 cloves. Generally the biggest cloves on a head of garlic I count as two cloves. Medium sized are one, small are 1/2.

Seasoning Mix

Add the cumin, salt, and cayenne into a cereal bowl. Stir it with the teaspoon until it looks well mixed.

Make Hummus

Add the following to the food processor:

5/8 cup tahini (fill the quarter cup measure 2.5 times)

1/4 cup olive oil

2 tsp seasoning mix

1/2 red onion (two quarters)

3 cloves garlic

1.5 tablespoons Bragg's Amino Acids

1 cup of the water you boiled the beans in

Blend until the onions are liquified.

Add three cups of the cooked beans.

Blend again, until all the big chunks are gone and it looks fairly creamy. I usually let it run 2-3 minutes per blend.

Congratulations, you made hummus. You can taste it now to see if anything has gone horribly wrong. It'll be warm, which means it won't taste exactly the same as you're used to, but should still be good.

Dump the hummus into the eight-quart container. I use one of the large spoons to help scoop it all out. Don't worry about cleaning out every last drop though, it'll just get mixed in with the next batch.

Repeat the above process 6 more times. You should end up with just about 8 quarts of hummus, which I've found to be the amount the house can eat before it starts to go bad.