Bingo. Blending those chickpeas in the food processor turned out a hummus that was as smooth as store-bought.
How to Make Your Hummus Extra Smooth
I was happy with my results and all set to publish my recipe, when my buddy Chef John Fraser dropped a brand-new technique on me. I was having dinner at his new place, Nix (which, for the record, is the best vegetarian/vegan restaurant I’ve ever been to), and was amazed at how incredibly smooth his hummus was. Compared to his, mine felt like the sludge water in the bottom of a Death Star detention-level trash compactor. I asked him how he got it so darn smooth.
“We do it in the blender,” he told me. Because of their vortex action and high-power, low-torque blade motion, blenders can purée foods much more efficiently than a food processor can.
The problem is that they don’t work very well for pasty, viscous things like hummus; the hummus sticks to the side of the blender jar and never really comes in contact with the blade. So what was John’s secret?
Blending it hot.
It seems so obvious in retrospect. Starchy, viscous liquids get firmer as they cool. Up to this point, I’d been cooking my chickpeas and cooling them before adding them to the food processor. Transferring them to a regular blender straight from the pot, along with plenty of their cooking liquid, makes it easy to blend them into a thick, smooth paste with the texture of a milkshake.
