Beet Hummus | A Color Explosion

You see colors of the rainbow of the visible spectrum on this plate. It’s stunningly spring-like although it might not feel that way. We have been seeing more snow than sunshine lately. I made David Lebovitz’s beet hummus with our friends at Cook-the-book-Fridays. I plated the hummus as a dip to an assortment of raw vegetables I found around the kitchen: carrots, heirloom cherry tomatoes and snow peas. The brilliant red dominates the plate, as well as my hands. Getting past the bright color, the beet taste clearly adds a fruity and earthy note to the thick and rich tahini paste. This is my first time making the beet hummus; I’ve become a fan of this oddly colorful dish. But I have made a similar tahini trio of dips with beets, carrots and parsley.

So much on the color of beets. One noteworthy advantage of this recipe is that there is only one step. I don’t remember any one-step recipe on this blog. You have to like hearing a single instruction of throwing all the ingredients in the bowl of a food processor. It goes fast after you measure out all the ingredients: two cooked beets (340 grams), a can of drained chickpeas (115 grams), garlic, tahini (90 grams), salt, fresh lemon juice (60 ml), cayenne pepper and pomegranate molasses. I weighed all the ingredients carefully. Isn’t that the whole point with a simple recipe? The beet hummus tasted great right off the bat.

I roasted fresh beets which concentrated their flavor. I ran out of tahini, a Middle East brand which I had difficulty finding this time. It’s tricky with the brand because some tahini can taste bitter, oily and chalky. I ended up buying a small jar from Trader Joe’s which has somewhat the taste and texture of peanut butter – but with a pale color and not too oily. Is there a brand of tahini you’d recommend? Feel free to weigh in. Meanwhile, I bet peanut butter can be an interesting substitution to tahini in a pinch.

I was very tempted to dribble olive oil all over the beet hummus, the way you would on a typical bowl of hummus. I refrained from doing that as I read the recipe again. That was not part of the instruction. Well, it turns out the beet hummus does not much need anything else. It has a nice balance of flavors, tang, heat and smoothness; and it’s a color explosion!.