Hummus

I made another batch of Melissa Clark's Stupendous Hummus (see here and here). This time, it took 2 hours 40 minutes to cook 1 cup dried chickpeas, and it made 2 cups cooked chickpeas.

I peeled the skin off of every single chickpea. It is hard to see the skin on the cooked chickpeas--the first time I cooked chickpeas I thought they didn't have any skin (even though they actually had one), because I couldn't see it. See for example the first picture, where it is extremely hard to see the skin which is on every chickpea in the blue pot. In the two Pyrex bowls are the de-skinned chickpeas and their skin (and a bay leaf).

To remove chickpea skin: Firmly pinch them (don't worry if you crush the chickpea a little, since it will be ground up soon), and the bean will slide out of the skin.

I tried out some of the new hummus ideas mentioned in this post:

• I did not use baking soda since I wanted to use the cooking liquid in the hummus.
• I let the chickpeas cool for a few hours in their cooking liquid (until I had a chance to de-skin them), so they were definitely room temperature when I blended them. However, I think I was already waiting until they were room temperature when I cooked my own chickpeas, so this wasn't a change. Next time, I want to try grinding them after they have been refrigerated.
• I also tried leaving out the olive oil. The hummus was very mild when it was first ground, the same as I've found in the previous times when I made this. However, after it had chilled, I tasted it, and I didn't like the taste without olive oil--it tasted simply like a thick paste of ground up chickpeas. I stirred in the olive oil into the cold hummus, and it improved the taste significantly and became silky, smooth, and had a creamy texture.