Easy Hummus Recipe: Just in 15 Minutes

Ingredients

• 1 (15 ounces) canned chickpeas or 1 1/2 cups (250 grams) cooked chickpeas
• 1/4 cup (60ml) fresh lemon juice (1 large lemon)
• 1/4 cup (60ml) well mixed tahini, see our homemade tahini recipe
• 1 clove of finely chopped garlic
• 2 tablespoons (30ml ) extra virgin olive oil, plus more for serving
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• salt to taste
• 2-3 tablespoons (30-45ml) water
• finely ground red pepper or sumac for serving

This is our favorite hummus recipe! You can make a really creamy smooth homemade hummus with a few simple tricks. We think it’s better than the packaged items from the store. Let’s look at a brief history before moving on to the Easy Hummus Recipe.

How to Make Smooth Hummus from Scratch?

In the past, you could bet that almost either of us would throw a tub of hummus on our car if we were at the grocery store. This happened until we found this simple hummus recipe, which we honestly believe, better than anything we could find in the store. The bonus is made with real and healthy ingredients, plus it’s vegan! (For another easy bean dip, try our Sweet Onion Black Bean Sauce.)

What is Hummus?

If you are not familiar with Humusa, we can briefly call it a delicious dip sauce or appetizer made from chickpeas, tahini, lemon and spices. It is widely eaten in the Middle East and Mediterranean. In the USA, you can find convenience store-bought versions at the grocery store, but we think you should skip these and make your own. Let me show you how!

Easy Hummus Recipe Directions

Chickpeas (or chickpea beans) are the basis of hummus. Softened beans become a smooth paste. You can use canned or homemade chickpeas in our recipe. I use them interchangeably and add a slight advantage to homemade chickpeas when it comes to flavor (that’s how I cook dry chickpeas).

Tahini is a paste made from ground sesame seeds and hummus makes the taste incredible. You can buy tahini from the store or you can make it yourself. We use homemade tahini to make 100% hummus from scratch. It’s ridiculously easy to do it yourself. Here is our tahini recipe with video showing you how to do it. It will last up to a month in your fridge, and our recipe makes enough tahini for two batches of hummus.

Making hummus without tahini: There are two camps in the world that loves hummus. Some people like the delicious, tangy taste of tahini, while others can go without it. We love it both ways, but we include tahini for the best hummus that rivals our favorite brands in the store. If you want to make hummus without tahini, leave it outside. A chickpea puree without it is still quite tasty. Just add more olive oil. Another option is to use a natural sugar-free creamy peanut butter instead.

Fresh lemon juice is really important for perfect hummus. Bottled lemon juice tastes not that good.

Fresh garlic adds some spice and flavor. I added a small clove and got it right. You can also try using roasted garlic for roasted garlic hummus. You can see how we roast garlic.

Ground cumin and salt help make it taste great, and cumin adds a little more spice and richness.

Olive oil makes the texture of hummus luxurious. Also, while serving, we add a little drizzle on top of hummus with spiral. I love to use fruity, lightly flavored olive oils when making hummus.

In addition to the above ingredients, you can add more flavor and ingredients to your hummus. I love adding roasted paprika for the paprika hummus, but olives, pine nuts and extra spices are also great options.

Is It Necessary To Peel The Chickpeas?

Another trick for the smoothest hummus is to remove the shell from each chickpea. We did. For a can of chickpeas, you’re looking for about ten minutes to remove all the skins. We didn’t want to add extra time to our hummus recipe below, but we tried both ways to be sure: skinless chickpeas and chickpeas straight out of the can.

In the photo below, the hummus spoon on the left has used skinless chickpeas. Right came from chickpeas straight out of the box.

As you can see even from this photo, the skinless chickpeas produced a slightly smoother hummus, but in our opinion, ten minutes of chickpea skin wasn’t really enough difference to guarantee good processor. After mixing for a minute, whipping and creaming in a food processor, it turns into the paste you see in the next photo. It is lighter in color and much thicker.

Homemade hummus is very easy to make and tastes better than anything you can buy in the store. If you don’t have tahini, you can try making a paste made from sesame yourself (see our Easy Homemade Tahini Recipe) or leave it out.

Chickpea puree without it is still quite tasty. Just add more olive oil. Another option is to use a natural sugar-free creamy peanut butter instead. We love serving this with flatbread – here’s our easy pancake recipe from scratch.