damn good hummus

I love hummus. And tzatziki. If I could put tzatziki on everything, I would. Sometimes I think in a past life I was born in Greece or somewhere in the Middle East because it has so many foods I love: chicken shwarma, gyros, falafel, baba ganoush, rice...oh man I'm making myself hungry.

Okay, so back to the point of this post-hummus. I have made hummus a few times at home and have always been kind of "eh" about it. I don't really like store bought either, I prefer it from Greek restaurants or Middle Eastern restaurants. Which sucks, because then I can't eat it at home. So I was hesitant to try this recipe. But from the pictures it looked like the hummus I love-smooth, lots of olive oil and some paprika. Next time I might even get crazy and throw in some pine nuts. Who knows.

Let me just tell you this hummus is the bomb.com. I don't even care that I just said bomb.com because it is. Just try it. I made some last night so I could bring it to work for lunch and I couldn't stop eating it. I also only took one picture because I'm awesome like that. And it's not even a good picture. But since I got the recipe from smitten kitchen, you can go ogle her pictures if you want. Or you could be a total traitor and just read her post (kidding).

The secret (apparently) to delicious hummus is to take the little shells off the chickpeas. It sounds tedious, but it wasn't too bad. And it's soooo worth it. I put my chickpeas in a little strainer and then picked up handfuls and rubbed them together. The shells came off really easily. You can also just kind of lightly pinch the chickpeas and the shell will come off.

silky smooth hummus

Ingredients:

1 (15oz) can drained chickpeas, shells removed
1/2 cup tahini paste
2 TB lemon juice (i just squeezed the whole lemon because we all know how I feel about measuring)
2 cloves garlic
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup water (I almost skipped this step, but it's necessary and doesn't ruin the flavor)
olive oil
paprika

In a food processor, blend the chickpeas for about a minute until it starts to clump. Add the tahini, lemon juice, garlic and salt and blend until pureed. With the machine running, drizzle in the water a little bit at a time until it gets a really creamy texture. I (of course) didn't measure my water, but it seemed to be about 1/4 cup.

If you're going to serve it right away, drizzle some olive oil on top and sprinkle with paprika and some parsley if you're feeling fancy.

If you're going to store it in the fridge for later, I would drizzle a little bit of olive oil into the food processor with it running to keep it smooth.

Enjoy!