Our kitchen has a large window that faces into our building's courtyard. Across the courtyard from our apartment, but directly in front of our kitchen window, are the balconies from another building. One of these balconies belongs to a couple who, each and every single day, bring all of their blankets, pillows, and rugs outside to shake them out and then hang them to air. The other day I looked up from what I was doing, saw this happening as usual, and thought to myself, people are weird. Also: what could they possibly be doing in there to get so dirty so often?
Naturally, I'm having this thought as I'm standing on my kitchen table taking a picture of a bowl of hummus. I know, right? People are weird.
You know what else people are up to? Peeling chickpeas. Peeling. Chickpeas. Why? Because peeling chickpeas gives you the most ridiculously bonkers smooth hummus you'll ever have. And I'll tell you, I was pretty upset the first time I made hummus with peeled chickpeas. Not because I had spent 15 minutes of my life peeling garbanzo beans, but because the hummus was So. Dang. Good. I knew I had sentenced myself to a lifetime of peeling peas. Ugh.
But! Chickpea peeling is fairly meditative work, and as I was midway though peeling a batch, cursing myself for even trying the technique in the first place, I remembered something that changed everything. Folks: CHANA DAL!!! Chana dal is split chickpeas. Split chickpeas that are ALREADY PEELED. You might be able to find a bag of chana dal at your regular grocery store, but if not, an Indian market or Asian grocery store (this is where I found mine) is a safe bet. Go get yourself a bag, cook 'em up, make the craziest, smoothest hummus you've ever had in your life, and roll your eyes at all the chickpea peeling weirdos in the world. But then be nice and let them know there's an easier way. Chana dal for the win!
One year ago: Roasted Chickpeas with Three Paprikas
Two years ago: Kale Chips
Game Changing Hummus Recipe:
Aside from the naked chickpeas, this hummus recipe differs from others I've tried before in a few other ways. First, the chickpeas are pulsed into a fine powder before any other ingredients are added. Next, there is no oil in the recipe. And lastly, there is more tahini than I have ever used before. All of it adds up to a mighty fine hummus. You can adjust the amount of liquid to make it thinner or thicker, and use more or less lemon and garlic as you like. I tend to tread carefully with the garlic, as the flavour might seem mild at first, but will bloom over time. Also! Not all tahini is created equal - if you use a coarser tahini, your hummus will not be quite as smooth. If you can't find chana dal you can use regular chickpeas. I recommend you peel them. I'm sorry, but I really do.
Recipe adapted from Jerusalem via Smitten Kitchen
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1 ¾ cups cooked chana dal or peeled cooked chickpeas
½ cup tahini paste
2-4 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice (I use 4)
2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
½ - 1 teaspoon salt, to taste
¼ cup reserved chickpea cooking water, or water
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Place the cooked chana dal or peeled chickpeas in a food processor and pulse for about one minute. Add tahini, lemon juice, garlic, and salt, and pulse the food processor to combine. With the food processor running, add chickpea cooking water one tablespoon at a time, until the hummus reaches your desired consistency. You will need to stop and scrape down the sides a couple of times. Transfer hummus to a bowl, drizzle with a bit of good olive oil, and serve with pita, crackers, and veggies.
Chickpeas are a super food! They’re a very good source of folate, protein, dietary fiber, phosphorus and iron. The fiber in chickpeas is mostly insoluble, which is really good for our digestive tracts. You can read more about the health benefits of eating chickpeas here.
All text and photos © The Muffin Myth 2013
Noreen
Delicious! I’ve been making the same garlic lemon hummus, since the 80s. None of my friends knew what hummus was until I started serving it at parties. Honestly, I peeled the chickpeas because I was curious about it. In the Future, I’m not going to worry about it, as it didn’t have so much smoothness that I would change my 40 year old recipe for it. I think it makes more of a difference in smoothness, the longer you blend the recipe, and using the water from the chickpeas. Thanks! 🙂
Chr
Must be the blender. I NEVER peel chickpeas. They come out supersmooth in both Vitamix or Blendtec.
Katie Trant
I sometimes peel and sometimes don't peel depending on how much time I have and how committed I am to the smoothest hummus. You might be interested to test batches side by side that have been peeled or not... I, too, have a Vitamix, and the peeled chickpeas yield a notably smoother hummus.
rOHAN
This very morning here was I - an avid hummus fan, raised on Indian food, now a lover of vegan Indian cookery - stood in my Tel Aviv kitchen having that eureka moment: "surely chana dal will make for good hummus?!" A quick google, and you're the first hit. Thanks for the recipe, the extra tahina bodes well for the finished article.
Mary Ker
Want to make it 100 times better? Add some oriental toasted sesame oil.
Gigi
Thank you for posting the amount of cooked chana dahl to use but would you happen to know how much dry you started with? How much dry chana dahl must I cook to get 13/4 cups cooked chana dahl. Thank you.
Katie Trant
Dried beans approximately double when you cook them, so you could start with 3/4 - 1 cup dried channa dahl.
Ann Engel
First, aren't you losing most of the beneficial fiber when removing the skins?
That said, have you considered using soaked chickpea flour? I have a couple bags of Bob's Red Mill garbanzo flour purchased for making gluten free bread but it seems it might be applicable here. I just don't know if they are cooked before milling or expected to be cooked as part of the recipe afterwards. It was just a thought to save time and a couple steps in the process.
Katie Trant
Hi Ann,
You'd definitely lose some, but not all of the fiber. To be honest, I only remove the skins some of the time because it's a major pain, but it does really give a silky smooth hummus you wouldn't achieve otherwise. I've never even considered using chickpea flour, but you might be onto something! As it happens, I found a recipe on Bob's Red Mill's site for just that: https://www.bobsredmill.com/recipes.php?recipe=866
John H
"1-3/4 cups of cooked chana dal" Is that measured before or after cooking? The chana dal takes up a lot more room after cooking! If it's after, how much dry chana dal would that be?
themuffinmyth
Sorry for the delayed response! I thought I had replied to this from my phone, but clearly it didn't go through.
1-3/4 cups cooked chana dal is a measurement of the beans after they have been cooked. Most dried beans approximately double when cooking, so I'd start with 3/4-1 cup of dried beans. You can always freeze any leftovers for the next batch!
Marion
I too am going to try this....I like the idea of getting the wine (in my case beer) and trying the peeling, just for the sake of it. But I will get the Chana dal just in case I only peel 4 or 5 peas...Ha ha....It sounds and looks awesome...thanks for the recipe. I will be sitting on my front verandah peeling chick peas and hoping that someone starts shaking their blankets ....will keep an eye out
themuffinmyth
Haha, yeah, get a frosty glass of beer ready and go for it! It really doesn't take that much time, but if you can find a way around it (chana dal!) then do it. I hope you like it!
Leanne
Katie, Chana dal? Genius! I peeled the chickpeas once and I must be a hummus Luddite because I didn't think it was worth the extra half hour, peeling (I made a huge batch of hummus). But this is worth it! I can't wait to try this, for that and the extra tahini!
themuffinmyth
Chana dal is totally game changing, right?! I think that the texture of the tahini is a factor as well because I just changed brands to one that is much runnier and much smoother, and it's totally taken my hummus to another level.
Allison
It's true, so smooth!!! The peeling wasn't so bad either 🙂
themuffinmyth
Yay! I'm glad you tried it. It's crazy smooth, right? Try and get your hands on some chana dal and skip the peeling (though you'd have to cook the beans, so...)
kellie@foodtoglow
I am a weirdo chickpea peeler, and delineated my weirdness in a fairly recent post. But chana dal - excellent lateral thinking Katie! I will give this a whirl when I get home from the States. I also think whizzing everything until smooth and THEN adding in the chickpeas along with iced water makes very smooth hummus. Some people like their hummus a bit chunky but I am with you in the quest for smoothness. Different routes to the same delicious outcome.
themuffinmyth
I do remember your recent peeled chickpea hummus post! But if you're cooking the chickpeas anyways, why not skip that step and use chana dal?! I'll have to try the reverse formula, whirling the tahini and garlic and lemon together and then adding the peeled chickpeas. I've got another batch of chana dal soaking right now for hummus tonight, so I'll let you know how it goes!
Tracy S.
I just bought a bag at chana dal on Saturday--at Walmart, can you believe it? I will be making this tonight.
Also, on the question of your neighbors, on Sunday I was researching futons for my daughter. I learned that it is the traditional way to care for sleeping mats.
themuffinmyth
Yeah, if it was sleeping mats it wouldn't be so weird... but it's EVERYTHING, and every day! So glad you've got chana dal! I hope you like this hummus 😉
Oh My Veggies (@ohmyveggies)
You are my hero. Officially. I've been intrigued by this whole peeled chickpea hummus thing, but resistant to trying it because I am so terribly impatient. This? I CAN DO! Also, can I just say, I love that you use the word bonkers so much. 🙂
themuffinmyth
Your hero?! Aww, shucks, thanks! I think bonkers comes from listening to the JtB podcast. I can't stop saying it!
Erin's DC Kitchen
The hummus looks awesome! I was listening to the Splendid Table and the host said some people swear by peeling chickpeas to get the smoothest hummus, but she recommended adding a little water to get the same effect. It helps emulsify the oil and chickpeas better, apparently. I peel chickpeas when making roasted curry chickpeas for snacking, it goes pretty quickly if you rinse them, lay out onto a paper towel, and then rub all over with another folded paper towel to loosen the skins. They slip right off!
themuffinmyth
Interesting! I've added water to hummus before, but it never gets quite as smooth as this. I'll have to try that paper towel technique if I need to peel chickpeas in the future. But for now, chana dal in my hummus!
Jess
I've SO been resisting the chickpea-peeling process, but you've convinced me. However, this chana dal mention surely makes me curious. I've never seen it, but I've also never looked. 😉 I have a reliable plce to buy chickpeas and tahini, but maybe they have this miraculous chana dal there too - I will be checking!
themuffinmyth
The chickpea peeling is definitely worth it! I guess you need to decide what's more work - peeling a can of chickpeas, or cooking up dried split chickpeas (chana dal). Since I cook my beans from dried most of the time anyways, chana dal is the way to go!
Kathryn
This is clever! I saw Deb's post about peeling chickpeas and I quickly decided that life was too short for that kind of thing even if I did feel like I was missing out on the best hummus ever. This is the perfect solution.
themuffinmyth
Right? I only regret peeling two batches worth of chickpeas before I figured it out! But not really, because the hummus it produced was bonkers smooth and amazing.
jacquie
please bear with me but i have a question bourne out of ignorance - is chana dal a type of chick pea that splits naturally? or is a chick pea that has been processed in such a way that it is split and then referred to as chana dal? if the later do you know anything about the process itself (i.e. mechanical or chemical or is hand labor involved) and how this processing effects the nutrional profile. Thanks.
themuffinmyth
Hi Jacquie,
Chana dal is a regular split pea that has had the outer skin removed and then is split in half. You can do this with a regular (cooked or canned) chickpea by pinching it between your fingers, which will cause the outer skin to slip off, and then the two halves of the pea will naturally fall apart. I imagine to make chana dal the peas are probably skinned mechanically, and then they would split into two halves naturally during the drying process. The same thing can happen with a regular green pea - it's the skin that holds the two halves together. Removing the skin would reduce the fiber content, but otherwise wouldn't have any significant impact on the nutrition profile.
Lawrence Merritt
Chana Dal is made from a different, smaller, chick pea than the chick pea/garbanzo bean with which we in the west are most familiar. In India they are referred to as Desi (of our country) chana or gram ( (gram being another name for chick-pea) or kala (black - they have a darker husk), or Bengal chana or gram. The bigger chick pea/garbanzo bean is called Kabuli (from Kabul) or Safed (white) chana or gram.
Another advantage of using chana dal is that the desi chick pea is lower glycemic than the "regular" chick pea.
Besan, Indian chickpea flour is ground from desi chana dal, and is thus lower glycemic than garbanzo bean flour.
Katie Trant
This is something I actually just learned, Lawrence! Another reader emailed me about it last week, and I did a deeper dive into chana dal and discovered this interesting fact. So incredible that these chickpea cousins have so much to offer us, yet are also so different.
Tessa
You made this sound like a mixture of all emotions. I think we'll pour the wine first and then dive right into the peeling, blending and dipping. Looking forward to it!
themuffinmyth
Wine first is a great idea if you're going to peel the chickpeas, as is the buddy system! I hope you were happy with the results, let me know!
saucygander
Great idea to use chana dal!
themuffinmyth
It's totally genius, right? Insanely smooth hummus, and no peeling!
Sandra
Haha...I first heard about the chickpea pealing from smitten kitchen and I though..OK I'll do it...I'm into that kinda thing....but you just made my day! I am definitely going to see if I can find Chana dal at a store near me. Thanks so much!!!
themuffinmyth
Peeling chickpeas is definitely work it for the smoothness of the hummus, and Deb is right, it only takes about 10 minutes. But Chana dal! Such a quick trick! I hope you try it.
summerraspberries
It looks good! I also want to make hummus this week, finally got time for it. Thanks for the post!
themuffinmyth
I hope you give this version a try! It's really good 🙂