The Homemade Hummus Adventure

One of my continued goals with our home is learning how to make things from scratch. Sometimes, when I look at shelf stable items and all of their dyes and preservatives, it bothers me that those things go in our bodies. I’ve wanted to slowly eliminate processed foods and learn how to make the things my husband I both enjoy. Also, I have found that it is better economically, too. I will share more about that later on.

A snack my husband and I both enjoy is hummus! I knew that this was something that I wanted to learn to make. After seeing this pin on Pinterest a couple of months ago, my mind was set to conquer it! So, on my last grocery trip, I grabbed a bag of dried garbanzo beans (chickpeas) and almost grabbed some tahini paste until I saw the price of it! The least expensive jar I could find was $6. Not wanting to pay this much, I googled ‘tahini paste recipe’ and saw that quite a few of them were the same – sesame seeds & olive oil. What?! That’s it?! I settled on this recipe, put that jar down and went to the bulk section, snagging 1/2 a pound of sesame seeds for $2. I must say, I felt overly ambitious at one point. This was a new arena for me, but I was determined to at least try it! And so, I did! If you’re wondering why I didn’t use chickpeas in a can, the thought of eating uncooked peas/beans from a can was totally unappealing to me. Also, since my goal was to go ‘processed free’, cooking my own chickpeas was the way to go.

After I’d made my tahini paste, cooked my chickpeas, I was set to make my hummus. I pulled out my Ninja blender, laid out all of my ingredients, and started making my hummus according to this recipe.

garlic, lemon, tahini paste, kosher salt, chickpeas, olive oil, cumin… let’s go!

prepped & ready!

In the recipe, it says you can skin your chickpeas, but um – I was not going to do that! That would have been quite time consuming and it doesn’t seem to make too much difference in the texture. After about 10-15 minutes of adding, scraping down the sides of the pitcher, and blending, I had myself some homemade hummus.

fresh hummus in the blender

I was so excited! I couldn’t believe that I had made my own hummus… and it actually looked like hummus too! The true test was to taste it, so I grabbed some pretzel crisps and did just that.

*drumroll* time to taste it!

It was so good! The homemade tahini paste made a huge difference and the taste really came through. It tasted fresh and yes, it tasted authentic. Will I make it again? Absolutely! Was it time consuming? Not really. The longest part was cooking the beans, 1 hour for a quick soak and 2.5 hours to cook, but that’s not a big deal since it does not require you to sit and watch them the entire time. I am looking forward to trying different flavor combinations in the future, and am glad I decided to try this!