Roasted garlic and squash hummus, aka yummus

Is there anything roasted butternut squash can’t make better? Apparently not.

Roasted squash and garlic hummus

Adapted from minimalistbaker.com

Ingredients

1 cup cubed butternut squash

8 garlic cloves, skin on (or the equivalent amount  of pre-roasted garlic)

4 peeled and minced garlic cloves

1 can chickpeas, drained (about 1¾ cups if you’re cooking your own)

1/3 cup tahini

5 tablespoons olive oil, divided

2 tablespoons lemon juice

½ cup parsley leaves, chopped

½ teaspoon ground cumin

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon smoked paprika

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Put squash cubes and unpeeled garlic cloves on a baking sheet. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon olive oil and a sprinkle of salt and a grind of pepper. Toss to combine. Bake in preheated 400-degree oven for about 20 minutes, until tender.

Peel roasted garlic and add along with squash, remaining olive oil and rest of the ingredient list to a food processor bowl. Puree well, adding more oil if needed.

Rating: To die for. This is certainly the best hummus I’ve ever made, and possibly the best I’ve ever eaten. Dave says the only drawback to making it for a party is we might not get to eat enough of it, and pronounces it inhalable. 

A few disclaimers: I used preroasted garlic from the deli, because well, I could. But I used dry garbanzo beans cooked in the slow cooker, because they’re more flavorful and I could control their level of tenderness. Really thoroughly tender garbanzo beans make for the most creamy hummus, so that might be a factor in how much we enjoyed this substance I now dub yummus.

To cook dried beans in a slow cooker, soak them overnight, drain them and pick over to discard loose skins and such. Put them in a larger oval type slow cooker. Add some big chunks of onion, a sprinkle of whole peppercorns, a bay leaf and a clove sprig if you feel like it. Add enough water to cover by 2 inches. Cook on low for anywhere from 4 to 8 hours, depending on how tender you want them. (You can, of course, do this on a stovetop instead, but the slow cooker is so wonderful for the inattentive among us.) If you’re using the beans in a salad, they might well be about right at the short end of that cooking time. Drain the cooked beans and store in premeasured amounts in freezer containers until you need them. (And some of the cooking liquid helps make a creamy risotto.) This method only takes planning, but almost no actual hands-on time, and after you've done it once you'll wonder why the heck you haven't done it all along. Especially when you look at the price of some organic canned beans on the shelf and make an eep sound.