June 10, 2012 – Baby Lima Bean Hummus

In my attempt to expand my palate and my cooking skills, I decided to start making beans.  Beans have never been something I’ve been particularly fond of so this felt like a huge step for me.  It was this palate expansion that prompted me to buy some Baby Lima Beans, and it was my lack of experience which prompted me to make an entire bag of Baby Lima Beans in one sitting.  Needless to say that’s a whole lot of Lima Beans.  After trying to down as many as possible during lunches, I decided to speriment a little.

I figured that hummus is made from chickpeas, and chickpeas are kind of a bean right?  Google says they are anyway.  With that in mind I figured I could make a hummus from Baby Liima Beans.

Baby Lima Bean Hummus – from my brain and accidentally way too many baby lima beans.

Ingredients (all proportions are completely a guess):

• 1 ½ cups of lima beans – check
• ½ cup of water – check
• Salt – check
• Garlic salt – check
• Lemon juice – check
• Red pepper flakes – check

Step 1: Put the baby lima beans in a small food processor and pulse until you realize that you’re going to need water to get them to grind to a fine paste.

Step 2: Add water to the lima beans and continue to pulse until there’s a reasonable paste.  I imagine that if you pulse for long enough it will become a fine paste, or if your lima beans are well cooked, or if you add enough liquid but any way mine didn’t work quite like that.

Step 3: Add some salt, red pepper flakes, and garlic salt to taste.  Pulse together.  Taste test, and add more water/garlic salt/etc at your discretion.  Add lemon juice also at your discretion.

Step 4: Serve with Pita Chips or something else of the cracker nature.

I seriously need more patience.  If I could have waited until the paste was fully pasty instead of being a little more chewy, it would have been better.  I loved that it was a little spicy but there was something slightly off. Regardless, I ate it, and so did the lunch crowd at work who enjoyed it.

This foodsperiment gets a +5 for using up ingredients, +5 for innovation, +3 for taste, -3 for my lack of patience.  Happy Sperimenting!

Baby Lima Bean Hummus and Pita Chips