Serve Curried Hummus for a South Asian Twist

Whether you mix in flavorings or top it with other ingredients, hummus is a blank canvas with so many delicious ways of eating it. This time, I gave it a South Asian twist. Adding curry powder to the hummus gives it more flavor, but the real magic here is in the olive oil which has been tempered with caramelized onions, mustard seeds, cumin seeds and fennel seeds. The oil is ridiculously fragrant and adds a creamy richness to the hummus, while the onions and spices add some contrasting crunch and complementary sweetness to the ultra smooth chickpeas.

The trick to making an ultra-smooth hummus is two-fold. The first is to make sure you start with very soft chickpeas. Usually when cooking legumes you don't want to cook them so long they lose their shape, but in the case of hummus, this is a good thing. For canned chickpeas, some brands tend to be softer than others, so you may want to buy a few and figure out which one works best (the firmer ones are great in salads).

The second trick is brute force. I use a Vitamix, which has blades that spin so fast, they pulverize even the toughest of chickpeas into a smooth creamy dip. If your blender or food processor doesn't have superhuman speed, you can compensate for it by using very soft chickpeas. I've used canned chickpeas for this recipe to save time, but if you want to learn how to make a hummus from dried chickpeas, check out my basic hummus recipe.