For the Best Hummus, Peel the Chickpeas
The best hummus is smooth and creamy, but many homemade hummus are much more textured than their restaurant counterparts. Unfortunately, the key to creating a truly smooth hummus is to remove the thin rind of the chickpea. Fortunately, they are easy to clean.
If you’re only dealing with a cup or so of cooked garbanzo beans, peeling them by hand is fine – even soothing. I learned the chickpea peeling technique from Deb Perelman at Smitten Kitchen and loved it because I never cook a lot of hummus in one go:
When chickpeas are cooked, they have a thin skin that sags a little like a Shar Pei , but less cute. It hangs around them as if they are struggling to shake it, but they just can’t. I found that if you help them – place one chickpea between your thumb and two next fingers and press gently until it pops out with a rather nice soft cotton, then press! into a bowl – the texture of your final hummus depends on it.
Peeling fresh (or even canned) chickpeas is a good thing to do while watching an Adult Swim show as it’s the perfect length and fun enough; It took me exactly one episode of Tom Goes to the Mayor last Saturday to peel about two cups of cooked garbanzo beans with my bare hands. The small beans pop out of the skin when pressed, although they pop out much more easily if allowed to cool first.
But if you’re making a vat of hummus, the manual method is probably not what you want. This doesn’t mean you have to put up with rough, textured hummus – as long as baking soda exists. Jerusalem cookery chefs and authors Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi use bicarbonate to rub off the rind so that it flies away during the boil (this also allows the beans to cook much faster).
After soaking the chickpeas overnight (as usual), drain the water and add the beans to the pot with a little baking soda (use 1 teaspoon for every 1 ΒΌ cup of dried chickpeas). Cook the soaked beans over high heat for about three minutes, stirring constantly, then add water to cover them a few inches and bring everything to a boil. Cook for 20-40 minutes, skimming off any foam and pop-up skins, until the beans are soft but not soft. Drain and prepare hummus as usual. And recipes Perelman and Ottolenghi and Tamimi are exemplary, but any recipe hummus significant wins if at first cleanse chickpeas from the skin. (Unless you like thick hummus. If so, I don’t know why you read all of this.)