I finally settled on soaking the chickpeas overnight with a little baking soda and cooking them in fresh water on the stovetop, with onions, carrots, celery, garlic, bay leaf, and some more baking soda, until tender. I then drained them, reserving a little cooking liquid to adjust the texture of the hummus.
Do You Need to Peel Dried Chickpeas for Hummus?
Read enough recipes for hummus, and you’ll start to note that those promising extra-smooth texture all have one thing in common: peeling the chickpeas before blending. Even our own Josh Bousel agreed in his recipe, finding that the tough skins were responsible for most of the lumps in lumpy hummus.
So I dutifully peeled an entire batch of chickpeas before puréeing them (…34…35…36…finally got one bite’s worth of chickpeas done!) and had some friends come over and taste them, side by side with a batch of hummus made from unpeeled chickpeas.
