January 24, 2010

Homemade Hummus Photo Tutorial

Making hummus is one of those things that you do once and kick yourself for not doing it sooner. Homemade hummus is cheap and easy. Store bought hummus is tasty, but expensive. My family especially loves the creamy kind which seems to be the most expensive version at the store. I started out making hummus with canned garbanzo beans aka chick peas, but then I quickly realized how cheap dried beans were. I think I got this 1 lb bag on sale for $2!  Using dried does require the extra step of soaking them in water overnight and cooking them. Those are both tasks I just take care of while I'm already in the kitchen. They sit on my counter or stovetop (while it's off) overnight and then I cook them while I'm cooking something else. The directions for cooking them are right on the bag.
  1. Dump beans in a pot, removing anything that doesn't look like a bean
  2. Fill pot with water to cover the beans, let soak for 8-12 hours (more isn't going to hurt anything)
  3. Drain water off and refill with fresh water to cook, cover pot
  4. Bring water and beans to a boil and let simmer for up to an hour. (They need to be soft, but they don't need to be mushy.)
  5. Drain in a colander and you are ready to make hummus  
These are the ingredients you'll need to gather.  The full recipe is below, but it can be adapted to suit your family. My kids and I REALLY like garlic, so I use a ton. You could add cayenne pepper, olives, more lemon, roasted red pepper, pine nuts, anything you can think of.


Homemade Hummus
1 lb dried garbanzo beans rehydrated as stated above (see bottom of post if you want to use canned beans)
1/2 cup lemon juice
2 1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 head of garlic
2 tsp salt
3/4 -1 cup olive oil
Put all ingredients except olive oil into a food processor. I tried this once before with a blender and it really doesn't work since it all gets stuck, but if you are patient (remember I'm not) you could make it work. You just need to keep opening the top and mixing the beans up inside the blender. At first the mixture will look like this...
...not so yummy. While you are running the food processor, open the little hole at the top and stream in the oil. This will result in the creamy texture of delicious hummus. Depending on how you like your consistency (and how cooked your beans were), you will use more or less oil.
When it's finally done, you need to have a little taste to figure out if it needs more salt, lemon, oil, etc to suit your family's preferences. This is where a little helper comes in handy. The 1 lb bag of beans makes a lot of hummus, so I put it in small plastic containers and freeze the extra batches. When you take it out of the freezer, you may need to stir it a bit and possibly add more olive oil, but it tastes just as wonderful as an unfrozen batch. We like ours on crackers, carrot sticks, homemade pita bread or chips, and pretzels.
Hummus Using Canned Beans
1 can of beans, drained and rinsed well
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tsp cumin
1-2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup olive oil
Follow recipe as above for mixing.

11 comments:

  1. I only hae a small food processor - do you think a mixer would work? not sure if it would ge the garlic chopped fine enough??

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  2. sandy, i would probably make it in small batched in my processor. or you can always come over and use my honkin' one!

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  3. I am going to make some hummus this week! Delicious!

    #6 plastic is clear and thin. The grocery that we shop at uses it in the deli and the bakery dept quite a bit. I tried to include a link here in your comments but it won't let me copy and paste. So I am going right now to put a picture of some #6 plastic in my blog post!

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  4. I am SO excited about this!!

    #1 - because I love hummus, and my kids love hummus
    #2 - because I just made homemade whole wheat tortillas and kept picturing them dipped in hummus - yummo!
    #3 - because I got a new food processor for Christmas and I am looking for more excuses to use it.

    I'm seriously excited!! Thank you!!

    Of course, NOW I'll need to run out to the store again to get some more beans . . .

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  5. Oddly enough I was just in the Chapel Hill area 2 weekends ago and had hummus for the first time at a gathering. I loved it! Thanks for the recipe -- I just saw it today on Tip Junkie. I bought chick peas (canned) yesterday b/c I knew I would need them when I found a recipe for hummus. Little did I know it would all come together so quickly! Now----to the kitchen!
    PS I am from GA but was visiting my daughter in Durham

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  6. I can't wait to try this. Our 3 year old daughter loves hummus. She once woke us up at 2 in the morning demanding more hummus

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  7. My beans when soaked overnight produced a nasty smell and a lot of stinky foam across the top of the water! Have any idea what that's about?

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  8. I made hummus last week using your recipe and dry beans – so much better than canned beans and the cumin adds so much. One of our most favorite spices, but never used it in hummus before.

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  9. Looks yummy! :)

    And I just replied to your question on my site.

    Thanks for sharing your recipe!

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  10. Sukuts... your beans probably started to ferment! In theory, you should put soaking beans in the refrigerator overnight, but I never do either. I would just pour off the water, rinse them real well and cook them.

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  11. Try adding about 1/4 cup of Tahini (Sesame Paste). You can find it from your local middle eastern grocery store or even Whole Foods. Its the traditional way to make hummus. Best.

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