Red lentil hummus

Above: Middle Eastern Tartine, made with red lentil hummus and Sawarma spiced chicken breast. 

The traditional Middle Eastern hummus is not quite as involved as its variations, customarily offered in the Western supermarket.  Traditional hummus is a showcase of high-quality tahini- chickpeas is only a vehicle to deliver tahini's flavor. The well-known Middle Eastern rule of thumb recommends to use a three to one (weight) ratio of cooked chickpeas to tahini; no added oil or other flavoring ingredients are required; a pinch of cumin, a crushed clove of garlic, and a few drops of lemon juice is all needed to balance the rich flavor of tahini. A very key issue, however, is the smoothness of final dip. A fine hummus is only attained when all the skin form every single pulse of cooked chickpea is removed. The high volume of collected skin from a small can of cooked chickpeas can surprise the naive reader. The skin which is the culprit in case of your grainy homemade hummus. As the laborious process of manually removing all the skin is time-consuming, my remedy is using a different legume, red lentil, namely. Red lentil cooks in less than ten minutes, has a neutral flavor, and does not have any skin around its pulses. The resulting hummus is utterly astounding, with no noticeable taste divergence from the original version. Presented here is a red lentil hummus recipe which is based on my favorite supermarket style hummus, roasted pepper hummus.   

Ingredients:

7.05 ounces (~200 gr) raw red lentils

½ TSP salt

1½ cup warm water

5.3 ounces (~150 gr) tahini

1 TBSP lime juice

2 TBSP roasted garlic (or 1 TSP granulated garlic)

2 TSP Kashmiri chili powder (or any chili powder of choice)

½ cup ice cold water 

Transfer the lentil, warm water, and salt to a saucepan. Cook on medium heat until lentil is fully cooked, the pulses starting to fall apart, and all the moisture evaporated. Hot lentil (or chickpeas) will result in gummy hummus. To avoid such calamity, spread the cooked lentils on a plate and transfer it to the freezer for 5~10 minutes, or until completely cool.

Transfer the cool lentil and the rest of ingredients to a blender and whirl, slowly adding the cold water to achieve the desired consistency.

Keep refrigerated in sealed jars.