Add some eye-candy to your next appie spread with this beautiful beet hummus spiked with harissa and lemon and topped with pomegranate seeds and mint.
Making Beautiful Beet Hummus
This recipe is super simple because your blender will be doing 90% of the work. Your 10% can be distilled into: Trim beet. Juice lemon. Open can of chickpeas. Find oil and spice.
Prettifying your serving plate is totally optional. But if you have time to roast some lemons, do it, cause the result is this warm citrusy aroma that is paradoxically both calming and uplifting. Seriously. Do it.
Eating Together Made Easy
As is most hummus, this recipe is 100% plant-based. It’s a great option for a party of mixed eaters since you can provide various types of dippers to suit just about any diet. Because this dip is spicy, you’ll want to serve it with crunchy, neutral dippers such as thin slices of toasted baguette (check the label for dairy if there are vegans in your group), pita chips, carrots, celery, and cucumber.
Let’s Make Beautiful Beet Hummus!
Beautiful Beet Hummus
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 cup raw beet, roughly chopped
- 1 tablespoon harissa {see Recipe Note}
- salt to taste
- 2 cups cooked chickpeas {Save the cooking/can liquid for other recipes. See Recipe Notes}
- 1 tablespoon pomegranate seeds {optional, for serving}
- fresh mint {optional, for serving}
- 1 lemon, roasted {optional, for serving, see Recipe Notes for instructions}
Instructions
- Place the lemon juice, olive oil, beet, harissa, salt, and chickpeas in the blender and blend until desired smoothness.
- For serving, garnish with fresh mint, roasted lemons, and pomegranate seeds.
Notes
- Harissa is a Moroccan spice blend. I bought mine and it contains dried hot chilis, cumin, caraway, coriander, garlic and spearmint. Yes, spearmint!
- Save the liquid from your chickpeas (either the cooking liquid or the liquid from the can.) This is liquid gold for vegans, you can use it to replace eggs in certain applications, like making cakes, and even mayo and meringues and egg-free egg nog.} If you don’t want to use it right away, you can pop it in the freezer.
- To make roasted lemons, quarter the lemons and place on baking sheet. Roast at 350F until browned, about 15-20 minutes. They will be hot obviously, so handle with caution. Your kitchen is going to smell awesome, btw.
PIN It! Beautiful Beet Hummus
How Beautiful Beet Hummus was Born: The Backstory
Lots of times I make up recipes because I want to play with flavour combinations. This one was born in an entirely different way. It started with this image of beets from gratisography. I love how dynamic it is. Your eyes move from the leafy tops to the embattled beets, then you start taking in splatters and your brain is registering “gore” while your eyes are simultaneously landing on a blood-soaked knife. Then a little smile plays across your face.
The banal act of chopping vegetables has been rendered as a crime scene.
I love gratisography. A sense of playfulness, and yes, this healthy dose of weirdness permeates his work. I’ve used his work in two other places: this humour piece and also in the video for Feeding the Hangry: Episode 1. Back to the photograph — I kept looking at it and wanting to put it in a post somehow and then I realized I could make something out of beets, something that really showcased those saturated pinky-red hues. And that’s how Beautiful Beet Hummus was born.
5 comments
What a beautiful pic!! Nice lighting!!
Why, thank you!!
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what a neat twist to add mint!!! amazingly delicious and fresh and…TBR (to be repeated) 🙂
So happy to hear you enjoyed it!