Traditional Homemade Hummus

What do you do when you have lots of veggies? Dip them in hummus, of course! Store-bought hummus is pretty good, but nothing beats homemade hummus that not only lacks the additives and sodium of their store counterparts, but also tastes that much better. This week we’re showing you how easy it is to make this healthy, fibre- and protein-packed dip that’s perfect for a snack with veggies or even as a substitute for salad dressing.

For this endeavour, we’ve brought in a hummus specialist and one of our Triforcers: Suzette Slim!

When Suzette’s not kicking A$$ at our Sunday Park fitness classes, she’s making us jealous with her delicious homemade hummus. Fortunately for us she’s agreed to share her traditional Lebanese hummus recipe with us.

Here’s what you need:

Yield: ~30oz= 4-6 servings

Prep: 10 minutes | Cook: N/A | Total time: 10minutes

3 tbsp lemon
3 tbsp sesame paste (tahini sauce)
2 garlic cloves
6 tbsp olive oil
~1 tsp salt
1 large can of chickpeas (~20oz)
OPTIONAL: black pepper, paprika or cumin (OR, as per our obsession, steak seasoning!)

Realistically, you can just throw everything in the food processor (or blender) and mix it all up, but, as we’ll get into later, the order of mixing can sometimes make a difference in taste and texture.

Here’s what we did:

First, mix the lemon juice and sesame paste. Next, add the garlic cloves and pulse until completely mixed into a paste-like consistency. Then, add the olive oil, salt and whatever spices you want to use. Finally, after rinsing, add the chickpeas! We added half of the chickpeas, blended, and then added the other half for a final mix.

We’ll admit, this recipe looks like some of the other ones that you can find online. However, I don’t know about you, but I have always had problems following online hummus recipes. If I got the texture right, the taste wasn’t quite there, or if I got the taste just right, the texture was way off.

Luckily Suzette gave us some tips to always get the best of both worlds! Keep these in mind for your next batch:

The quality of ingredients can make a HUGE difference in the taste outcome. For example, we’ve been making hummus with bottled lemon juice. We noticed an immediate taste difference when we used fresh juice that we squeezed from a lemon! Same for the tahini... we either need to improve how we make our sesame paste or use the authentic sesame paste that Suzette used (shown in the ingredient pictures).
The order of ingredients can affect the taste and texture. Normally, we throw everything into our blender and hope for the best. However, ensuring that the flavourful ingredients are well mixed prior to adding the chickpeas assures that the flavour is evenly dispersed throughout, which can affect the texture too!
Food processor >> blender. Now, don’t get us wrong, a blender can still be used (we actually used one for this recipe) but a food processor works exceptionally well for getting that creamy, smooth-textured hummus. For instance, a blender can push aside and neglect some of the mixture, which alters the taste and texture. Our blender REALLY didn’t want to blend the hummus, so we kept switching between the blender and the good ol’ fashion masher.
Taste is relative. The best part about making your own hummus is having immediate control over the taste. Once all of the main ingredients we blended, we used the “finger test” to add how much spice we wanted.
If you have the taste but not the texture, add water! Adding a small amount of water can help get that creamy texture without botching the taste you have.
Interestingly, eating hummus as a dip for vegetables and chips is a North American thing... it was normally just eaten with pita bread. Ah well, it’s another great way to add raw veggies to your diet!