Hummus has become a bit of a staple over the last few years, often featuring at a picnic, for a quick snack with crunchy crudités or even as a sandwich filling. It’s surprisingly easy to make, especially if you have a small blender or food processor, and this recipe can be easily adapted to use other beans or pulses and can be combined with your favourite herbs and spices to make different flavour combinations too.
Ingredients
- 1 x 400g tin of chickpeas or 100g of dried chickpeas soaked overnight and cooked
- Juice of half a lemon
- 2 tablespoons of tahini paste
- Salt and black pepper to taste
- Half a small garlic clove crushed or finely grated
- Water (as required)
Method
- Add the garlic, lemon juice, tahini, salt and pepper and a teaspoon of water into your blender and blitz to a paste.
- Add the tin of chickpeas and pulse until you have mixed all the ingredients to a thick paste.
- Add additional water a teaspoon at a time until you have the consistency you like – depending on how you are serving the hummus you might like it more chunky or thinner and spreadable – you are in control of how heavily you blend it and how much water to add!
- Taste and add more seasoning if you like.
Variations and swaps
- You can follow the same recipe using any tin of white beans you have in the cupboard – even mix and match!
- You can add vegetables such as roasted peppers, defrosted peas, cooked edamame beans, cooked broad beans, grated raw beetroot (not in vinegar) but always make sure you have a rough ratio of 1 tin of chickpeas or beans to half a tin of the chosen vegetable or your hummus may become too runny. If this does happen, add another tsp f tahini and it will thicken up again. If you are adding vegetables, add it to the blender in stage one with the lemon juice and other ingredients.
- Add spices or herbs – ½ tsp of cumin seeds go well with beetroot hummus, smoked paprika goes well with red pepper, and mint and basil go well with peas or edamame beans.