Committing to making hummus each week instead of buying tubs at the store was an important shift in my kitchen. It’s not uncommon for me to eat hummus with all three cardinal meals of the day and it seemed disingenuous to preach the gospel of do-it-yourself while accruing plastic containers in my recycle bin. So I pull out my food processor once a week and make a tub, it’s therapeutic.
But in all the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve held on to a nasty little secret: I used canned chickpeas. It’s pathetic, really, but the tin cylinders tricked me into thinking they were oh-so-convenient.
Well not anymore. Having tried Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi’s genius hummus recipe over at Food52, I’m sold on cooking the beans myself. They shorten the boiling time by using baking soda in the mixture, it helps slough off the skins and break down the protein quickly.
True to my fashion, I made a double batch on my first run. I’ve now got tubs of hummus stacked away in the freezer. With my appetite, they won’t languish long.
In other Ottolenghi news, Yotam wrote a beautiful “second coming out” in The Guardian recently. Adoption for gay parents is still a struggle, and it’s heartening to read his story.