The Recipe with Kenji and Deb - Hummus

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

If the only hummus you’ve ever had came from a cold tub procured at a supermarket, yeah...you haven’t really had hummus. Homemade hummus, served warm, is an experience unto itself, and 1000% a better snack than a dusty protein bar. Deb and Kenji also tell us how they really feel about flavored hummus. Recipes Mentioned: Ethereally Smooth Hummus (Smitten Kitchen) The Food Lab’s Science of Great Hummus (Serious Eats) Hummus Heaped with Tomatoes and Cucumbers (Smitten Kitchen) Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Hi there, it's Robin from PRX. I'm very excited to tell you about NeverPost, the newest show in the Radiotopia family. Have you ever wondered why is the internet like that? That's the question the folks at NeverPost try to answer in each episode. Why is there something called influencer voice? What's the deal with the TikTok shop? What is posting disease and do you have it? Why can it be so scary and yet feel so great to block someone on social media?

The NeverPost team wonders why the internet, and the world because of the internet, is the way it is. They talk to artists, lawyers, linguists, content creators, sociologists, historians, and more about our current tech and media moment from PRX's Radiotopia, Never Post, a podcast for and about the internet. Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. Kenji, what are you eating? It's a protein bar. I have not had a chance to eat anything today. There's a particularly bad one too.

Are there good ones? I don't really know. You know what would be a really good snack? What would be a good snack? I'm thinking hummus would be a really nice snack. Like hummus with carrot sticks is like a real classic. Maybe you do some pita chips. Have you ever snacked on hummus before? Yeah, I frequently snack on hummus. Yeah, I love hummus. Or hummus? I don't know.

I think it depends on where you're from, how you pronounce it. I've had friends, various friends from the Middle East who have tried to teach me the correct way to say hummus. Hummus. Hummus. Hummus. I've heard hummus. Okay. So we're just going to call it hummus? Hummus. Hummus. I've heard hummus. Okay.

Okay. So we're just going to call it hummus. We're just going to give it like the American pronunciation. I feel like hummus is such a good thing. I don't know why we have to mess with it to make it a good thing. Like I saw versions, there's like pumpkin spice hummus is a big thing in Nepal and I don't want that. I don't want cinnamon and nutmeg and sugar and pumpkin.

Well, the good thing is that you don't have to have it if you don't want it, Deb. No, I want to complain about it on my podcast. That's why I have a podcast. That's like the whole reason I'm here, to complain about things that I'm not gonna eat that don't affect me. Yeah.

Yeah. From PRX's Radiotopia, this is the recipe with Kenji and Deb. Where we help you discover your own perfect recipes. Kenji is the author of the Food Lab and the Wok and a columnist for the New York Times. And Deb is the creator of Smitten Kitchen. She's also the author of three best-selling cookbooks. We've been professional recipe developers for nearly two decades,

and we've got the same basic goal, to make recipes that work for you and to make you excited to get into the kitchen. But we've got really different approaches, and on this show, we'll cook and talk about each other's recipes, comparing notes to see what we can learn from each other. This week, we're talking about hummus. That's coming up on the recipe. Stay with us. I was trying to find this TikTok. I'm going sidebar right away. I saw a couple weeks ago and this guy was complaining. He's like, if I come over to your place and you bring out

a container of hummus, it better not have like carrot stick tracks in it. Like it has to be. They want it fresh? It's got to be fresh. You do not want to see that somebody else has already dragged a carrot through it. You want it to look like the top of like a, of like a soft serve ice cream.

Yes. It's that idea of a formed shape that has not, you don't want to see that the hummus has been handled already. Right. Track marks, dips, possible crumbs from an old pita. It's not a mood as the kids say. It was hilarious. I'll have to see if I can find it so we can work in it. Deb, when you serve hummus, do you just pull the container straight out of the fridge and just plop it on the table and just say, hey kids, go at it? Or do you, you know, because I feel like the best hummus is hummus that's either room temperature or even slightly warm, you know,

like because it's been freshly made and that it has a real effect on the texture of it, on the sort of viscosity and the consistency of it. What are your thoughts on that? First of all, I'm appalled that you think I would buy hummus if I could make it at home. This is called the recipe, not the container I bought at the store and opened up and for me, okay.

Of course we buy hummus too. I'm with you. I think room temperature hummus tastes much better. It really just has, you can get more of the flavors. When things are cold, the flavor is a little locked down. You could probably explain the science of that. I'll just say that things taste more bland when they're cold, in the same way that like ice cream often needs to be stronger flavored to have flavor than it would if it was melted ice cream puddle.

Yeah, I mean it's partly just because your nerves are more receptive when they're warmer, and also partly because the volatiles, like the things that you're smelling are like actual little bits of the stuff flying off and going up into your nose. And the colder something is, the less volatile it is. Yeah, so you're getting little bits of hummus flying up into your nose. I guess it's true that all aromas are airborne particles. Mm-hmm. That go into your nose like a lock and key. Mm-hmm.

A lock and key, wow. So yeah, I'm with you that store-bought, it's definitely better at room temperature. Also, it feels a little softer. It's easier to scoop. For me, that's what it is. It's that if you've got like say, well, depending on what you serve your hummus with, but like if you've got, so I tend to prefer softer pita, you know, like untoasted pita, but I know a lot of people like pita chips or like some, sometimes those like little sober containers that you get at the airport, you know, they've got like the pretzel, separate container of pretzel chips in the top. I find when the hummus is too cold,

you run into like a, you run into the issue of breaking off the end of the chip, you know? Inside the hummus because it's too thick and too viscous. And to me, that's almost a worse offense than finding a carrot track in your hummus, you know? Finding like the tip of someone else's chip in your bite. It's true, it's true. I think it's just, it gives you that like,

how old is this and where has it been and who dragged their carrots stick through here before I got there. But I really like it with carrots. I feel like it's so basic. I also like it with cucumber spice, you know, cucumber sticks are good if they're not too wet so it can still pick up.

Other raw vegetables are fantastic for dipping. But I feel like there's something with the sweetness of carrots and the saltiness of the hummus that are like perfect compadres. So for me, I actually don't, I don't bother, I do just take the container out of the fridge and put it in front of the kids. For me, hummus is either like a snack of pure convenience, in which case I'm not going to pull out a hummus container and let it in front of the kids. Like for me, hummus is either like a snack of pure convenience, in which case, like I'm not going to pull out a hummus container and let it temper. You know, I'm not thinking about it that far ahead.

It's a snack of pure convenience, or it's something that I'm actually going to put work into and like make from scratch. And if I'm making it from scratch, then I'll actually put in the effort to make it real good and serve it, you know, properly warm or at room temperature, like freshly made, because I think it's, it's just like a it's a real different experience, you know, having freshly made hummus versus hummus that's been like squirted out of a giant nipple into a plastic container in the fridge. Sounds so good.

God, I'm so hungry right now. Boy, is this show appetizing. Do you want to talk a little bit about the history of hummus? We could talk about the history of hummus. And we're going to try and do this without wading into too much geopolitical territory here. Hummus is old. Yeah. The earliest mention of hummus was apparently in a 13th century cookbook from Aleppo in

present day Syria. But I've mostly understood it to be Egyptian. How about you Kenji? Yeah, I mean, I've known it variously as Egyptian. How about you Kenji? Historically. I mean, I've known it variously as, I associate it with Middle Eastern countries in particular Arab countries and as well in Egypt, where I think in Egypt it's commonly either chickpeas

or fava beans. Fava, right, yeah. Yeah, fava bean hummus. And of course, like in modern times, it's often associated with Israeli cuisine, although it is not originally an Israeli dish, it's just been sort of widely adopted there. And so, you know, you'll see it in restaurants from all over the

Levant. And I think that it's been in Egypt and the Levant for centuries, and there are also Jews that go back that far in those areas too, and that's where it gets really muddy, and there's so much argument and contention over it, but the reality is that it's been there for centuries. Sure. Let's talk about how we make hummus. I mean, I wouldn't say I grew up eating it a ton, to be honest. Like probably it was more of a snack thing.

Kenji, did you grow up eating a lot of hummus? Not when I was a real little kid. You know, I grew up in a Japanese household, but by the time I was, say, in like sixth or seventh grade, I had a whole lot of Jewish friends and I would get served hummus a lot. And yeah, I know, I think growing up in New York, you do just get kind of exposed to cuisines

from all around the world. So I had relatively early exposure to hummus, but I don't think I had like a real great, warm, freshly made, homemade hummus until probably, I don't know, in my late teens or maybe even my 20s. Cafe Munir in Seattle was the first place that I had hummus that blew my mind. I was like, well, and it was a very similar experience because the hummus,

the texture of it is really light, almost fluffy. Again, it was warm. There was really good olive oil drizzled on it. There were some fresh chickpeas that had been cooked from dry, as opposed to the canned chickpeas, which just have so much better flavor. Dried chickpeas just have been cooked from dry as opposed to the canned chickpeas, which just have so much better flavor. Dried chickpeas just have much better flavor than what's in the can, which is funny because what's in the can is really just dried chickpeas that are cooked,

but somehow that canning process... Isn't there a certain acidity required in canning, and that's why they end up being a little bit briny-er tasting, a little bit tank-er tasting? It could be that, yeah. That would make sense. The texture is also a little different. With canned chickpeas, they tend to be a little bit tangier tasting. Could be that, yeah. That would make sense. The texture is also a little different, you know? With canned chickpeas, they tend to be a little bit firmer. They have like a little bite to them, you know? And a well-cooked dried chickpea will have like a little bit of bite,

but it's not gonna be like al dente in the way that like pasta is, you know? It breaks down into something that's really nice and creamy. But yeah, like I remember having, almost there, I was with Naomi Tomke, who is a food writer. I don't know if you knowke, who is a food, I don't know if you know her, she's a food writer here in Seattle. Her Instagram handles gastronome with two G's. But yeah, she introduced me to this restaurant, Cafe Mounier, which is still around and still makes really great hummus. And that was when I started really

thinking, oh, like this is the dish that's different from what I thought it was, and probably worth making at home. And that's why I sort of have this dichotomy now, I guess, that there's this like, there's the store-bought hummus that is just like what it is, you know, and it can be, I don't care if it's straight out of the fridge, it just is what it is. It tastes fine. And even from brand to brand, it's like, I don't find that the best brands are much better than the worst brands. It's just, it all just tastes fine.

So I found that when I started making fresh hummus at home, because I was chasing this ideal I'd had at restaurants that was so special to me, I wasn't getting that. I found that I would cook, soak the chickpeas, cook the chickpeas, blend it, and it was never so smooth. And I was really obsessed with getting it smoother. And I think this is something that comes up

in a lot of hummus recipes. How do you get that incredibly fluffy, smooth, I call it ethereally smooth texture? Because that to me, if you can get that, that's worth making at home. If you're just going to make something a little bit gritty or whatever, you might as well buy it. But there's something, if you can get that right. I wanted to know what the tricks were that they were doing at restaurants. And I think I tried it a few different ways. And I think you did too in coming up with their own recipes for it.

Yeah, and I think, and you and I actually end up with different techniques, which is real interesting. Very different. So in your ethereally smooth hummus, tell us about how you treat the chickpeas. Previously, I had made it from, I soaked the chickpeas, I'd cook the chickpeas. And obviously, that's the ideal.

That's the best flavor you're going to get the most. You know, especially if you have really good dried chickpeas from a place that grows them really nicely. But I wanted to play around with this idea of what happens if you remove the skin of the chickpeas. Because basically, you know, chickpeas have this like loose skin to them. And yes, exactly. And I was just playing around one day, and I realized that the canned chickpeas I had, if you sort of just use very, you know, wash your hands and pop it,

you can just, it comes right out of the skin. I just popped it, then I popped it, and I made hummus with it, with these skin chickpeas. And it was the best hummus. You mean you sat there for like three hours popping bathrobes off your chickpeas. We're going to get into that. So I made the best hummus of my life. And then I just kept it to myself because nobody's going to do this, Deb.

This is crazy. Like don't even tell people. It's so insane. The idea of like, manhandling individual chickpeas. And then one day, I was like, what if I just timed it? And it took, it was one can of chickpeas, and it took nine minutes.

And I thought nine minutes, we don't balk over nine minutes of prep time. This is not a big deal. Also, if you miss one or two, it's still gonna be delicious. I also think it might be fun to play right now. I didn't get into this, but I bet you could fry those chickpea skins and make a really great crackly topping. That's an interesting idea.

Because that's the part that's really good when you fry chickpeas or you roast them with olive oil. They remind me of like, like beetle wings. Mmm, so good. No, but you're right though., so I basically I was like nine like nine minutes I'm writing it up and that's where my ethereally smooth hummus came from this insanity of I'm going to tell you the skin chickpeas You're gonna think I'm insane and I always give you know Listen if you're happy with the hummus you're making at home and it doesn't involve this this is not your recipe But for the people who have tried it and it's a really popular recipe on the site

They agree that it really makes a difference. Have you tried any of this chickpea skin popping tricks? Are there, wait, there's tricks? There's a couple of them. So you can do similar to what you would do with hazelnut skins, where you put the chickpeas, empty the chickpeas over a wire rack, and then you kind of just like roll them around

under your hands and that loosens up the skins, and then you can dump them in a bowl of cold water and the skins float up, and you kind of just like roll them around under your hands and that loosens up the skins and then you can dump them in a bowl of cold water and the skins float up and you kind of just like massage them a little bit and the skins float up and the chickpeas sink and you can kind of scoop them off. No, I'd love to try that. Yeah, it's not perfect. Like you don't get every single skin and you know,

it's not as good as popping them off individually by hand, but it's a lot faster. Nine minutes? That's not the end of the, I know. Are you one of the stupid things I do for nine minutes a day? Like, I'm just thinking like scrolling, watching a TikTok on like,

why you shouldn't serve hummus with like carrot track marks in it. Like I can't, but yes, it's nine minutes. And if I bet if you got other people involved, it would be more like two or three minutes. That's really not that bad. And I felt it was completely worth it for people as unhinged as me or were really chasing this

thing. And also you were saving time because I wasn't using soak, you know, I wasn't soaking and cooking them. But I feel like the really good hummus recipes, the really popular ones, they all address the skins in some way. You have a recipe for the food lab, right? Where you do something similar. Yes.

Because I'll circle back to what I do these days after, but I want to get into your method. Well, there's two tricks for the smoothness in mind. And this is actually a technique I learned from John Fraser, who's a chef in New York. But he made some really smooth chickpeas. And I asked him how he did it. And he said, oh, I just boil the crap out of the chickpeas.

And so that's what I do now. I take the chickpeas. I start with dried chickpeas. I so that's what I do now. I take the chickpeas, I start with dry chickpeas, I soak them in salted water because that helps actually tenderize the skins a little bit. Soak them overnight in salted water. And then the next day I cook them with like a carrot, maybe an onion.

You can also just do them straight in water on their own. And then I add a pinch of baking soda. So you make the water a little bit alkaline because pectin breaks down better in alkaline water. So like the carbohydrate glue that holds cells together, vegetable cells together, breaks down better in alkaline water. And so then you boil the chickpeas until they're really falling apart. So beyond al dente, like you want them to be kind of kind of mushy.

And then the trick is you blend them while they're still hot, like while they're still real piping hot. I just put them straight into like a Vitamix or any, you know, any good blender. You blend them while they're still hot, like while they're still real piping hot. I just put them straight into like a Vitamix or any, you know, any good blender. You blend them while they're hot and that way you can use a blender as opposed to, once they start to cool down, they get a little thicker and they won't go down into the bottom of a blender. And so you have to put them in a food processor and instead in a food processor just doesn't get things as smooth. So you're using a Vitamix or a high-speed blender like that? Any kind of high-speed blender, yeah. Or even a regular blender will work better

than a food processor will. But the key is that you have to do it while they're still hot so that they can create the proper sort of vortex and actually get smooth. And then if you want it real, real extra smooth, you can pour it and push it through a conical strainer, a fine mesh strainer, and then let it cool to room temperature, slightly above room temperature,

and you're gonna have like super, super creamy, smooth hummus that I guess it takes more tools than your method does. But maybe a little less insanity. So. Less tedium, you know, I'd rather spend 20 minutes playing with tools than nine minutes squeezing individual chickpeas. I was going to say when you were talking about the insanity of peeling a can of individual chickpeas, I used to work at a restaurant where in the spring we would make an English

pea soup and to make the bowls of pea soup, we would shell the peas, blanch them, and then peel each individual pea. Why would you peel a pea? What's wrong with pea skins? To get smoother, tastier soup. To get like a soup that's really sweet and very, very pea-y and very, very smooth. No, that's accurate. That's exactly how I would describe it.

Because my first thought is, because so your method, you're using a mixture. You've got a couple of techniques. You're cooking with salt for tenderization. You're using baking soda. Soaking with salt. You're cooking with salt for tenderization. You're using baking soda. Soaking with salt. Soaking them with salt for tenderization. You are using baking soda to help break down the skins and then blending while hot

where you're three non-popping chickpea moments to get the hummus the way you want. Those are my, yeah, exactly, exactly. When I'm making hummus, if I put a vegetable in there while the chickpeas are simmering, if I'm starting from dried chickpeas, I'll also generally just blend that vegetable right in. So instead of picking it out, I just throw it in the blender.

You blend it all and it makes it tasty. I was so close to agreeing and the idea of a blended carrot in my hummus sounds so sweet and orange. And I mean, I'm all for like not wasting vegetables, but carrots are to be dipped in hummus, not to be blended in. But I'm a purist. I really like hummus flavored hummus. You're a purist, not a pure purist.

I like hummus flavored hummus. And by the way, I think we forgot to start with the ingredients because we just think they're so common, like that you wouldn't have to explain it. But most hummus, say the vast majority of hummus recipes are chickpeas, sesame seeds in the format of sesame seed paste, tahini, lemon juice, and garlic, and then olive oil. Yeah. If you're not making fava. Yes, unless you're using, unless the Egyptian hummus is with fava. So several years after I published my ethereally smooth hummus for crazy people who don't mind popping chickpeas out of their skins. This is a real long recipe title.

Yeah, I know. We're really going for it. We need to get the SEO on this. Somebody sent me an email and said, Deb, why are you doing this? I'm like, well, there's a lot of reasons we can talk about in therapy. They asked me why I wasn't using chana dal. So I think it was almost 10 years later that somebody had pointed out that if you buy dried chana dal, which are also sold as split chickpeas or Bengal gram, usually they're at Indian

grocery stores or international grocery stores, or you can buy them online. I actually meant to grab a bag from Offset that I have. But basically what they are is they're already peeled chickpeas. They are the split pea to the pea. Whoa. And in the manufacturing process, which involves cleaning, dehusking, splitting, polishing, this skin is lost. So you basically can make your perfect hummus the way I described it, but you're not de-skinning them.

It's like a pre-skinned chickpea. It's a pre-skinned chickpea and it's absolutely, if you don't mind me saying, brilliant. And so by this mixing of the cultures, you go to the Indian grocery store. Again, there are plenty of other cultures that use it. Is it just that you're passing off your nine minutes of chickpea peeling to like a Bangladeshi child who's- No, there are machines. There are machines.

I actually was looking up videos on it because I was curious about the manufacturing process. But yes, from what I understand, there are machines that take care of this, that roll them, that de-husk them. It's similar to lentil or probably probably what's done in like split peas, you know, where you buy split peas for, I was thinking of that when you said you had to skin peas. I'm like, but you could just use split peas, but they won't be fresh from a farm. Oh, that's not quite the same, yeah. So, you do have to still, you are going to soak it and you are going to cook it,

but it actually tastes, I want to say it takes half the time of dried chickpeas, but it takes a lot less of dried chickpeas, but it takes a lot less time because you don't have that skin to soften. And it's smaller. Exactly. And once again, you can cook it real soft. We're not these are not, you know, beans that we're going to eat whole. So you don't need it to have that perfect kind of al dente tenderness. You actually, you know, like you found, want to cook them longer.

But the whole process, I guess it takes longer than nine minutes, but the flavor is unparalleled because you're starting with something dried and you're getting that. And it's such a cool method. I actually, I should do a video on it. That is brilliant. It's like a no method method.

It's just you start with an easier ingredient. Exactly, but it was such a, like, I really had no idea. So I want my nine minutes back. I guess I am trading it for an hour of soaking and then maybe an hour to hour and a half of simmering. But in general, they do cook a lot faster. So it's really cool. And they're they're pretty inexpensive. I think I most recently bought like a four pound bag because I just wanted to make a lot of hummus and they're delicious.

Nice. So we just talked about all the ways to chickpea, dried, fresh, peeled, split. But when we come back, we're going to talk about the rest of the ingredients and hummus, including tahini and garlic and everything good you put on top. Lemon. Lemon. Yeah. Welcome back to the recipe. So Deb, tahini. Tahini.

Talk to me about tahini. So tahini is a Middle Eastern condiment made from ground sesame seeds. I actually, I hadn't done, I just understood it to be sesame seeds toasted, blended, almost like a nut butter, but with sesame seeds. Do they have to be toasted even? That's what I realized that I was not correct on. I think it's actually not usually toasted or it might have more of that sesame oil flavor, like the Asian.

Because I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure, um, like one of the big differences between tahini and a Chinese sesame paste is that Chinese sesame paste tends to be toasted. If you're cooking a Chinese dish, like a sesame noodle or something, and you can't find proper roasted sesame paste, you can take tahini and cook it in a skillet and you can toast it even after it's ground. Yeah. It doesn't just turn nice and dark brown.

Is it like browning butter where you like can toast the solids that are in tahini? The solids end up toasting, yeah, but it doesn't split like brown butter does. No, it just, it'll just gradually darken. You kind of get like a rubber spatula, nonstick skillet or a wok or something like that, and you just kind of stir it around as it cooks and it will toast in the pan. And you can use that as an ingredient. That's a great tip. And it also explains why, you know,

they taste so radically different. Toasted sesame oil is such a dynamic flavor. And tahini has a much, it's got the fresher flavor. You know, it still has a little bit more of the bitterness that's natural in sesame seeds. But I actually had it in realized that sometimes it uses hold sesame seeds, not just unhold. And I hadn't realized that sometimes it uses, um, hold sesame seeds, not just un-hold. And I hadn't realized that.

And I'm not sure. How did, have you ever made tahini from scratch before? Yeah. And you know what I did was I, I used to make it with un-hold sesame seeds. And then one day I decided I'm going to haul my sesame seeds and I sat there. Did you pop them all in your fingers? And then 10 years later, you have your first sesame test done. No, it honestly only took like two and a half years.

You'd be surprised. And then, god. I find that one of the big problems with tahini is that if you're not using it regularly and you have a container of it, it separates and then you get the oil at the top and then the bottom is just like cement. Yes, exactly. So like Tahini is one of the most difficult things to remix in a container once it's split. You have to like really jam a spoon down in there. Like I've broken and bent metal utensils inside a jar of Tahini in the past just because it

was sitting on the supermarket shelf for too long and I opened it up and like, oh no, solid block of cement at the bottom. So Tahini is just, so it's just the, it's the whole sesame seeds blended with usually some oil and salt. Is there something else in there that I'm missing? I don't think there's even necessarily always oil or salt. I think sometimes it's just, often it's just sesame seeds. Interesting. And the oil comes from the seeds themselves. The oil that splits off. But no, that, I mean,

that's basically it. But the thing about Tahini is that it's sort of similar to how za'atar is a single, it's thyme, but it's also a spice blend. Tahini is a sesame paste, but it's also a sauce made with that sesame paste. It's a condiment. Exactly. And when you're talking about tahini, the condiment, tahini, the paste is just a single ingredient in that condiment. Every time I make hummus, I feel like I'm going really easy on the garlic.

I like it, but you often don't know how loud that garlic is going to get until the next day or a few hours later. And if you put a lot in in the beginning, oh, I don't taste it. I feel like it takes some time for the garlic to disperse, to release all of its flavors. So sometimes it's just a couple cloves. Microplane can make an entire batch of hummus taste tremendously garlicy. Well, microplaning garlic is a way to really get it pungent.

Yeah. You know, because you're like, you're really mangling the cells up. Yeah. Like you're getting, you're getting a lot of those strong flavors when you microplane garlic. And I use a microplane often, generally like I will, like if I'm cooking something, I might microplane the garlic directly into the pan, you know? So it goes straight from the microplane into the hot oil or butter or whatever it is.

But yeah, if you microplane garlic and like let it sit in like a cold salad dressing or let it sit just on the counter, it gets real stinky pretty fast. Really sharpen the tongue. Like, where's my daughter called it? Very spicy. I don't like this. Spicy hummus. Speaking of spicy hummus, do you ever add other flavors to your hummus? Paprika is a common addition.

Some people like to add the lepo chili. People add cumin is a real common addition to hummus. Do you do anything like that? I don't. I really like the pure taste of the chickpeas, the tahini, the lemon juice, the garlic, but I love putting stuff on top of hummus. Hummus piled with things is my favorite. Like I love, like if I want maybe I'll put cumin on one part of it if you're spreading it out over a plate. Maybe I'm putting paprika on. I use the tar lot for both the herb and the herb blend, which

is generally how it's sold. And I also love using sumac. Yeah, I love sumac. Sumac is such a delicious spice. It's a little bit sour. It looks like a dark kind of garnet red paprika, little slightly bigger flakes. But it has like a real lemony tart flavor. And it's also just, it's just gorgeous in salad.

It is pretty, yeah. Stuff too. So I like using that. How about you, do you flavor your hummus? I might sprinkle it with some za'atar or sumac, It is pretty, yeah. Stuff too. So I like using that. How about you? Do you flavor your hummus? I might sprinkle it with some some za'atar or sumac, sometimes chilies depending on who I'm serving it to. Recently, I've done it with like a lepo chili butter or lepo chili olive oil, which I think

is really tasty. That only works when it's warm. But you know, for me, actually, I think the one of the most important parts of hummus is how you plate it, actually. Yes. Because like just like plopping it in a bowl, where you have more volume and less surface area doesn't work for you.

I want a wide plate. Like the same way I would do labneh, you get a wide plate, you spoon it, and then you spread it with the back of the spoon, and you try and make a little, you know, like a circular kind of swirl with a trough, so that when you pour some olive oil on there, there's a nice ring of olive oil that pools in there, and then you can put some spices or whatever on top, zeta on top, so that when you pour some olive oil on there, there's like a nice ring of olive oil that pulls in there.

And then when you, you can put some spices or whatever on top, zetsar on top. And then when you like, you know, and you go in and you scoop with your pita or your carrot or whatever, like you create like a new path. It's like when you were, um, when you were a kid and you went to the science museum, you know, and then at least the, the, the science museum now has this big sandbox where, and there's like a camera above it that projects like a terrain on it. So if you lift, if you pile the sand up high,

like it'll project like brown on top. So it looks like mountains and where the sand dips down low, it projects blue. So it looks like rivers. And so you can like form rivers by tracing your hand through the sand. Oh, if you've ever played Sim City, it's like that. You know, you can dig troughs where the water flows.

Whenever I eat hummus like that, I imagine myself as like one of these like Sim City, it's like that. You can dig troughs where the water flows. Whenever I eat hummus like that, I imagine myself as one of these Sim City gods where I'm digging a new trough for a river of olive oil to flow through. So I think of my hummus as a landscape that I'm... So you're having fun with your food. Fashioning with my own hands. If you wanna call creating new worlds playing, then sure.

You wanna undermine my experience. I also have fun swirling it on the plate. want to call creating new worlds playing then short. You want to undermine my experience. I also have fun swirling it on the plate. I love, I just love the shape of it. I love that restaurant look when you get the home us and it also, it does create ways to sort of puddle olive oil. And so each, I feel like I'm coming back to the nacho idea where I like it. Things more piled on where each bite is going to be a little bit different. Like this one's more chickpea and this is more thyme.

Right, eroginia to you. Exactly. I like things. I actually, I really like unmixed food. Yeah. Like I tend to like it. So every bite's a little bit different. Do you like hummus for dinner? You know, I mean, like when you're making your own, because once you've made your own amazing hummus, like with any of our techniques, I mean, this is, this is not just a snack, this is centerpiece hummus. Oh no, yeah yeah. So how do you ever make it like the center of the meal, have like you know

kind of putting enough stuff around it that you can build a whole meal around? Yeah yeah exactly, if it's like you know you eat it like meze style and just have like a bunch of things around, for sure yeah. I like eating like that, I like eating you know like having like just grazing on a bunch of different things in the middle of the table, including a pile of hummus. This is one that I do a lot in the summer where basically it's called hummus heaped with tomatoes and cucumbers because I love a long recipe title. But it's basically like one of those Arabic or, you know, Middle Eastern salads with the tomatoes and the cucumbers, the onion, parsley, lemon juice. I always put a lot of sumac in that one too, olive oil. lemon juice. I always put a lot of sumac in that one too, olive oil. And we use pita, grusely grilled pita wedges to scoop it up. But it's such a nice way to eat it in the

summer. And sometimes if we're doing it like purely for dinner, I might add, I have a recipe for spiced turkey meatballs that you just roast on a sheet pan and they're kind of mini. We show that they're sort of falafel-flavored meatballs, which sounds all wrong, but it's got the hummus and like the garlic and like, I'm sorry, the hummus is the cumin and some other Middle Eastern spices in it. And it's such a good dinner. You know, you're dipping the meatballs in the hummus, you've got this tomato cucumber salad, you have pitas.

It's really fun. You're eating like a nice balanced meal, but it's also really summery. Have you ever tried, um... Waffling hummus? Snickerdoodle hummus? Snickerdoodle hummus! Chocolate mint? Mango hummus?

Red velvet hummus? Boooo texture as opposed to a food. I do feel like this is like a real American food thing, though, where we take something that exists and, like, drain it a flavor and then apply an artificial flavor to it. You know what I mean? Like, I think of, I don't know, just, like, flavored, like, things that are flavored in ways that they don't need to be. Yeah. Well, why do you, why do Yeah, well, why do you hate America?

I celebrate the spirit of innovation in America while also never wanting to put anything called red velvet hummus in my mouth. Like, I think both things can be true. Yay, innovation, boo, I don't wanna eat that. I do feel like maybe classic hummus isn't as marketable as like something that makes people go, red velvet hummus.

And it's vegan, you know. Yeah, I mean, of all the things that I want to put in my mouth, red velvet hummus is, yes, I don't think it's on that list. Didn't even rank a strawberry daiquiri hummus. Oh, God. I was trying to, oh God.

Oh my God. I just like hummus, flavored hummus. Sorry, if you love strawberry, I did not mean to yuck your yum if you love strawberry. I think we, I don't think, I think that, you know, we try not to yuck yum, but I think we can yuck that yum. Because chickpeas were never meant to taste like strawberry. I think that with like the stuff we've done with cauliflower pizza or like, I don't know. It's just, it's cauliflower is good and pizza's good. And why are we, why are we doing this for it's neither?

Because we can't eat carbs. Just don't eat carbs. Is there, is there hummus ice cream? Leave cauliflower. Oh, there is hummus ice cream. Oh, God. There sure is. There's plenty probably is. Oh, God. There sure is. There's plenty of it.

Oh my God. I don't know. It's also just one of those things. Like it's so good at room temperature. I don't really want it. Or warm. Like I don't want it cooked into something else. I don't want hummus bread or hummus cake.

Although tahini's been a very popular ingredient in desserts and baked goods for years now. I feel like it's definitely like tahini. Ice creams are very common. Tahini, cookies, I see them a lot. Oh yeah, I love tahini cookies. I think I've probably done some stuff with tahini too. Like a muffin, but yes, it can be good.

I think it can- I can only eat a tahini bit of it though. Moderation is key with tahini. Oh God, okay, so we're gonna have a good time with the wrap up questions today, Kenji. Moderation is key with TV. Oh, God. Okay, so we're going to have a good time with the wrap-up questions today, Kenji. Can you waffle hummus? I don't think you can put hummus in a waffle iron. So I feel like you could definitely do a savory, you know, waffle and put hummus on it,

but that wasn't really what the question was. A falafel waffle. Falafel waffle. God, that sounds really good. Actually, falafel waffle would probably be delicious in a... falafel waffle. Falafel waffle. God, that sounds really good. Actually falafel waffle would probably be delicious. Falafel's wonderful in a waffle. I tend to, well, we'll do falafel in another episode. We should do a falafel episode, yeah.

Falafel episode would be really fun because I think there's a lot of misunderstandings about how falafel is made, so maybe it's a good topic. Does hummus taco, can you, I guess you could put it in a taco. I mean, yeah, I feel like if you're getting like a real, you know, like a real thin Levantine bread and you're dipping it in hummus

and you're pulling up some chunks of other stuff, you've basically made a taco, right? Yeah. Or is this like, is this like, we're defining a food by its form. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what came first, the taco or the pita. I'm not interested in being an authority on that

or saying it wrong, but you can definitely put it in a taco. Yeah, there's tacos arabes, right? Like Arab tacos in Mexico, which are tacos made on pita bread by Lebanese immigrants. Really? Yeah, and I'm sure you can find versions that have hummus on them. That sounds amazing to me.

I would eat the hell out of that. Yeah. Leftover hummus. What's that Deb? Never heard of it. Yeah. I mean, hummus is great leftover. You just, if you make it fresher, like I feel like you do want to do it the honor

of letting it come to room temperature or like even like microwaving it for a second and beating it so that it's even room temperature. It usually needs to be re-smoothed. Just sometimes you might need another drop of water or whatever to loosen it up when it's fresh, but I think it's way better at room temperature too. Can you cook hummus in a pan with butter? I'm just going to say no. Although apparently you can cook tahini in a pan with butter. I'm just going to say no. Although apparently you can cook tahini in a pan.

Yeah. Without butter. Not without, not with the butter. Yeah. You can cook, you can cook tahini to turn it into a roasted sesame paste. Yes. Can you get hummus out of kids clothes?

Yeah. Usually. Yeah. Not the olive oil spilled over it. Not the olive oil spill, but the hummus itself. Yeah. Exactly. Although I'm sure my kids would find a way. I don't the olive oil spill, but the hummus itself, yeah. Exactly. Although I'm sure my kids would find a way.

I don't know if you could get red velvet hummus out of kids clothes, but hopefully we'll never have to find out. That's it for today's episode, but we want to hear from you. Is there another recipe or food you want us to chat about? Any comments or questions about this week's dish? Tell us at TheRecipePodcast.com or at Kenji and Deb. The recipe is created and co-hosted by Deb Perlman and Kenji Lopez-Alt. Our producers are Jocelyn Gonzalez, Perry Gregory, and Pedro Rafael Rosado of PRX Productions.

Yuri Lasordo is the managing producer. Emmanuel Johnson is the audience engagement manager, and the executive producer for Radiotopia is Audrey Martavich. Thanks for listening. Radiotopia. From PRX.