Hummus Recipe Recipe

How to make it

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• In a food processor, combine the mashed garlic, garbanzo beans, tahini, lemon juice, 1/2 cup water,cumin and olive oil. Process until smooth. Add salt, starting at a half a teaspoon, to taste.
• Spoon into serving dish and sprinkle with toasted pine nuts and chopped parsley.
• Serve with crackers, raw dip vegetables such as carrots or celery, or with pita bread. You can cut the pita bread into thin triangles, brush with olive oil and toast for 10 minutes in a 400°F oven to make pita chips with which to serve the hummus.
• Makes about 3 cups.
• Notes:
• The chick peas that you use will have a huge impact on the end flavor. Try different brands until you find the brand that tastes the best to you. The big cans of cheap chick peas generally make for nasty humus. Meijer brand are the best value that I have found so far.
• You can vary the quantities of the ingredients as you wish. I sometimes put in a little less tahini than the recipe calls for, and you can leave it out altogether if you want, but you'll probably notice that it doesnt have as much body without it.
• The original recipe says that the cumin is optional, but I disagree. It adds tremendously to the flavor. The original recipe also calls for a lot of garlic. When you put that much in, the humus becomes hot and actually burns your mouth. It is an unpleasant side of garlic that I never knew about until I made that humus recipe.
• If you find that your humus has too much lemon juice in it, do not follow the standard cooking premise that adding a little sugar will neutralize the acid in the lemon (which it will). Adding sugar to this recipe makes it nasty. Blagh!
• Some recipes suggest using peanut butter instead of tahini. Bad idea. I think that it might be the sugar in the peanut butter, but it is a nasty concoction. Perhaps it would work out ok if you used natural peanut butter with no sugar added.
• The red pepper that I use is ground New Mexican Red Chile. You can probably use any ground red chile, but do not use the standard 'chili powder' that you put in chili. That stuff has several ingredients in it, one of which is cumin, and you already have cumin in the recipe. Also, you may want to experiment with the quantity of red chili that you add. Up to the quantity that I have in my recipe, it does not make the humus hot. Rather, it adds another layer of flavor that is quite delicious. As you add in more than the amount in my recipe, it does begin to add spicyness and a slight bitterness.
• It is best to test the humus with the same thing that you are going to eat it on. For example, if you are going to eat it on pita bread, dont test it with tortilla chips or carrots. It will taste different depending on what you eat it on. You dont want to adjust the flavor based on how it tastes on something that you dont plan on eating it with.