Hummus

I recently discovered, much to my chagrin, that the hummus I usually buy contains sugar.  This didn’t upset me too much, though, since I’ve been wanting for many months to try my hand at making my own.  Now that I have a food processor, I figured it would be a good time to take the plunge.

Hummus is one of those things that few people realize is really easy and inexpensive to make.  If you buy it at the supermarket, you might pay $4 for a tiny package.  If you make it at home, you can spend $4 on the ingredients for a half-gallon.  It freezes well, too, so even if you don’t eat a lot of it, or if (like me) you live alone and can’t eat a lot of it fast, you can still make a huge batch and keep it for a long time.

I made this batch from a one-pound bag of dried garbanzo beans / chickpeas. This required me to soak the beans and cook them until tender, which took about 2 or 3 hours altogether.  If you don’t have the time or patience to deal with that, you can use canned ones.  I wanted to avoid the canned ones because of the extra cost and packaging.  There are also some additives in canned beans that can be avoided if you use dried.

As usual, this recipe is pretty arbitrary.  I tend not to pay much attention to quantities, (unless I’m baking) and I’ll usually add more than the recipe calls for of ingredients I like.  (Beware!  Sometimes this can be disastrous!)

6 cups prepared chick peas (this is what a one-pound bag of dried beans turned into once it was soaked and cooked till tender. Use canned if you prefer.)

**Save the water from cooking the beans.  You might want to use it at the end to thin out the hummus.  I used about ½ cup of mine.

3 lemons worth of lemon juice – approx ½ cup.

1 cup tahini

8 cloves garlic, crushed

4 tbsp olive oil

1 ½ tsp ground cumin

1 tsp cayenne pepper

2 tsp salt

Ground black pepper

 

Put everything but the chickpeas and water in the blender / food processor and mix it up a bit.  After that’s blended, add the chickpeas.  Blend until it’s pretty smooth.  Add water as necessary to thin to a consistency you prefer.  If you want, you can add more lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper. 

Let hummus sit overnight in the refrigerator to let the flavors blend together.  On the second day, I put mine in the freezer for later.