The Easiest Hummus Recipe with Tinned Chickpeas - Mon Mack Food (2024)

If you love hummus as much as I do but have never made it at home before, I urge you to give it a go! It is so simple to make and really only requires you to throw a few things into a blender and turn it on. And what’s even better is it’s so much cheaper than buying it in store or restaurant and in my opinion, tastes much better too!

How Do You Make Hummus at Home That is Better Than Store Bought?

Tahini is a paste made of roasted, hulled sesame seeds. It is made in the same way as any other nut butter but has a very unique taste. Tahini is quite bitter and savoury compared to it’s fellow almond or cashew butters and is significantly runnier due to sesame seeds’ high oil content.

It is used heavily in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisines, either served by itself or in dressing and dips like baba ghanoush or in our case, hummus.

If you want to make hummus but just don’t have tahini on hand or can’t find it where you live, here are a couple of substitutes:

• Try using a natural nut butter with a few drops of sesame oil. This will give it the texture and consistency it needs, plus the smoky, nutty flavour of tahini from the sesame oil.
• Greek yoghurt – as tahini has quite a sour, bitter flavour, Greek yoghurt is somewhat comparable in taste to it (I emphasise somewhat). It obviously wont taste exactly the same, but if you’re desperate for a substitute, it might just surprise you.
• Leave it out – obviously it wont taste quite the same, but I have made it before without it and it does still taste good… Just in a slightly different way. This is sort of like saying, “can I make bolognaise without mince?” Well you can, but then it’s technically called something else (Napoli, if you were wondering). Tahini gives hummus a unique flavour, smoothness and a rich texture and without it, it’s still tasty, just not entirely hummus anymore.
• DIY tahini – if you have a bunch of sesame seeds on hand but no tahini, you could try your hand at making your own! You will need a pretty powerful blender for this but all you need to do is blend lightly toasted sesame seeds until they liquify, about 3 minutes.

To make hummus at home, you only need the following ingredients:

• Tinned Chickpeas
• Lemon
• Garlic
• Tahini
• Salt
• Olive Oil (optional)

The 2 main ways you’re going to tell if your hummus has spoiled is by look and smell. If your hummus begins to develop a sour, unusual sort of smell, this is a clear indication that it is beginning to ferment and mould development is imminent. Fermentation in food isn’t always a bad thing when in a controlled environment (think kimchi or sauerkraut), but when you are not planning on it, it is best not to take the risk, and instead, cut your losses and throw it away.

The signs to look out for with spoiled hummus is mould development on the surface which can appear in the form of changes in colour (black, pink, blue, green, white or yellow), fuzzy growths or sliminess. Although there are some foods where you can simply cut off the mould and eat the uninfected areas, this is not the case with hummus! By the time the mould has developed enough to show visually on the surface, it is more than likely that the entire container is contaminated. In this case again, don’t take the risk and just throw it out.

In most cases, grainy hummus will be due to the chickpeas not being ground finely enough to form a smooth paste. This can happen if your blender isn’t very powerful, or if there is too much or too little in your food processor (too much and it might get jammed, too little and there won’t be enough contents for the blades to properly connect with the ingredients).

I have never had an issue with my hummus being lumpy when I use chickpeas straight from the tin and I use either a my NutriBullet 900 or my Braun MultiQuick 9. If you’re finding that you just can’t get a silky smooth batch no matter how much you make, it might be a good idea to give your chickpeas a boil before blending them. Here’s how you’d do it;

1. In a large enough saucepan, add the chickpeas along with their juices plus enough water to cover them by a few centimetres (this quantity doesn’t really matter as you’ll be draining then anyway).
2. Add a tsp of salt and 1/2 tsp baking soda and boil the chickpeas for around 10 minutes or until they’re super soft and mushy (test this by squashing them with a fork – they should break down to a paste with very little resistance).
3. Drain the chickpeas, again reserving the cooking liquid, and continue with the recipe. Remember than you won’t need to add as much liquid as the chickpeas have already absorbed quite a bit of water so just be mindful of this.

If your hummus is dry, this is easily due to there not being enough liquid. It’s hard to follow a recipe to a tee and get it exactly the same every single time, especially when you’re using ingredients like lemons which can vary in size, juiciness and sourness; chickpeas which can be drier or different sizes from brand to brand (on even batch to batch); and tahini which can separate (oils from solids) and be thicker or runnier based on whether you’ve stirred it first or not.

All of these can effect the consistency and flavour of the finished product which is par for the course when cooking unfortunately. It’s important to always have extra ingredients on hand when making a recipe so you can adjust if needed. If your hummus is dry however, all you need to do is add more liquid.

Whenever I open my chickpeas, I make a habit of draining off the liquid and setting it to the side just in case. Before you just go and dump in all of the chickpea liquid (aka aquafaba) into your dry hummus, taste it as it might be more receptive to another squeeze of lemon rather than a relatively flavourless liquid. If it tastes fine and the balance of flavours is spot on, add about 1 tbsp of aquafaba and either mix it in or blend again. If it’s still too dry, add another tbsp and repeat until it’s just how you like.

There are 3 reasons why your hummus might be bitter;

1. As I said earlier, tahini has a mildly bitter flavour, so if your hummus is bitter, you’ve most likely added too much tahini. Also make sure that the tahini you do have is hulled, as opposed to unhulled. Hulled tahini just means that the bitter husks on the outside of the sesame seed have been removed before blending. Unhulled tahini is darker in colour and a lot more bitter than hulled tahini, so just check which one you have because unhulled tahini will make your hummus taste like burnt coffee.
2. Another cause might be that your lemon is a bit old, causing it to taste more bitter than sour.
3. Lastly, if you’ve added too much garlic or just happened to used a particularly strong clove, it’ll leave the hummus with a very pungent, raw taste. To prevent this from happening, you can either roast your garlic or crush it in a mortar and pestle with a tsp of salt before adding it to the food processor. Both of these mellow out that acrid and intense raw flavour of the garlic. As much as I can, I use roasted garlic because I prefer the taste, but do whatever you like.

If you’ve already made a batch and it’s bitter, instead of throwing it out, just double the quantities of all of the other ingredients to dilute the flavour a bit… Don’t worry you can freeze half if it’s too much.

Because hummus has a relatively neutral flavour profile, it lends brilliantly to being spruced up with different additives. Try anything from blending through different vegetables like roasted capsicum, beetroot or pumpkin, fresh herbs like parsley or coriander, or a tsp of different spices from the following:

• Paprika
• Turmeric
• Cumin (my personal favourite)
• Coriander
• Sumac
• Cayenne Pepper
• Zaatar