Red Lentil Hummus

Name: Red Lentil Hummus
Total time: 20 min
Ingredients: 1 cup dried red lentils; 2 cups chicken broth or water; 2 cloves of garlic (finely minced); 2 tablespoons tahini; 1 tablespoon olive oil; Juice of 1 small or medium lemon*; ½ teaspoon kosher salt; ½ teaspoon cumin; ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper; 1-2 tablespoons of water (to reach desired consistency**)

As the name of my blog suggests, I love to cook as much as I love to run. As with running, my enjoyment in cooking and baking comes in the process and progress, in the gradual steps of improvement.

When I finally mastered my whole wheat sourdough bread, I felt more accomplished than I had when I qualified for Boston. I’m perpetually tweaking Saturday morning pancakes in pursuit of the perfect recipe. I’ve actually cried when apple pie recipes have gone wrong. Hummus has been an endeavor that has occupied me since I received my first food processor 6 years ago.

For years now, I’ve been in pursuit of a recipe for incredibly smooth hummus, like the types you get at a good Middle Eastern or Mediterranean food restaurant. No grainy texture or flavorless dips. This recipe from Smitten Kitchen produces a smooth hummus, but some days I lack the patience to peel each and every chickpea.

Soaking and cooking my own chickpeas instead of using canned improved the texture of my hummus, as did embracing the goodness of using both tahini and olive oil. But by far, the best texture of hummus I’ve made slightly deviates from the traditional formula for hummus – chickpeas, lemon, garlic, tahini, and olive oil.

The word hummus literally translates to chickpeas in Arabic. Hummus as we know it, called hummus bi tahina (hummus with tahini) first appears in Levantine cookbooks from the 13th century. Since then, the creamy chickpea dip has been a popular staple in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean foods and gained popularity in the West as well. Part of me is a bit torn in calling a hummus made with anything other than chickpeas hummus. However, red lentils are a similar legume that is popular in Lebanese and Syrian cuisine and they render a very similar dish.

I made this red lentil hummus by happenstance one day. I had overcooked a batch of lentils the day before (that’s what happens when you use the “set a timer and go work in another room” cooking method) and they were just a bit too soft for my taste when I went to reheat them the next day. But, the texture seemed perfect for a hummus.

After all, when you cook chickpeas for a hummus, you want them to be soft. Cooking chickpeas for hummus takes easily an additional 30 minutes of cooking time. So if soft chickpeas are ideal for hummus, I figured that an equally soft similar legume would work.

My assumption was accurate: the soft red lentils render a velvety and creamy hummus. The flavor difference is apparent yet subtle and similar enough to the original: savory, garlicky, and a hint of a delicate earthy flavor. The texture is so smooth and

While you can substitute cashew butter or another neutrally flavored nut butter in lieu of tahini, you won’t get the same authentic Middle Eastern flavor. Tahini is well worth purchasing: it’s less expensive than other seed and nut butters and has a wide array of applications. I mix it with lemon juice and water to use as salad dressing and pasta sauce in addition to hummus.

This red lentil hummus can be enjoyed in a variety of ways: as a dip for veggies and pita bread, sandwich spread, dolloped in baked potato or sweet potato, on toast, with falafel, and so on.