The Best Homemade Hummus
The simplest and most delicious homemade hummus you can make in your own kitchen. Bypass the $6 tub at the grocery store, and make a batch yourself!
Homemade hummus shouldn’t be a chore people! Have you ever opened a $6 tub of grocery store hummus, and thought “I could make this”? And then you did, and it was terrible? Friends, I’m here today with a simple recipe for the tastiest homemade hummus you can make yourself.
I ate a ton of crappy hummus to create this winner. Is that like kissing a lot of frogs before finding your prince? A lot of garlicky garbanzo bean frogs. I’ve been trying to perfect homemade hummus for years. I’d never really gotten it right, and Troy and I have choked down some gross spread during my search for a great recipe.
I own Homemade Pantry and love everything Alana has to say in there. One of the recipes in there is a hummus that the author’s friend makes. I decided to give it a shot and promised myself that I would follow the recipe to a “t”. That was a promise I quickly broke as I struck out on my own. The recipe below is mine, but it was inspired by Homemade Pantry. I will forever be grateful to Alana for finally nudging me in the right direction.
I buy smoked paprika at Costco, and if you don’t have a Costco or access to smoked paprika, I weep for you. Seriously, it’s the best. I get a year’s worth at Costco for $4. You NEED this.
Other Favorites for Using Smoked Paprika
- Vegan Sriracha Aioli
- Smoky Avocado Dip
- Instant Pot Tortilla Soup With Rice
- Home Fries – Cast Iron Skillet Potatoes
- Easy Homemade Tomato Soup
If you found yourself saying “what the hell is sumac”, you’re not alone. I said that the first time someone recommended this spice to me for hummus. You can’t find it in a normal store. You need to drive to a fancy pants store where aggressive yoga moms shop. THOSE are the stores where you can find Sumac.
If you’re in the Puget Sound area, head to Central Market and they have it in the bulk spice section. It is a Middle Eastern spice, so if you have an ethnic grocery store, try there! If you can’t find it, dial up the smoked paprika a bit, and put a pinch of cayenne pepper in instead of the sumac. Tahini can usually be found near the peanut butter in the grocery store. It’s stupidly expensive, but the $6 jar will easily last about 12 batches of hummus.
Making this recipe or others?
Post a photo on my Facebook page, share it on Instagram, or save it to Pinterest with the tag #sustainablecooks. I can't wait to see your take on it!
The simplest and most delicious homemade hummus you can make in your own kitchen. Bypass the $6 tub at the grocery store, and make a batch yourself!
- 1/2 lb dried garbanzo beans/chickpeas or two 15 oz cans (liquid reserved)
- 5 cloves garlic
- 1 lemon juiced
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1/8 tsp smoked paprika, plus more for sprinkling on top
- 1/8 tsp sumac, plus more for sprinkling on top
- 1/4 cup tahini
- sesame seeds for garnish
- dried parsley for garnish
(If using dried beans) In a mixing bowl, place dried beans and cover with 4 inches of water. Let soak overnight. Drain the liquid and add the soaked beans to a crockpot. Cover with 3 inches of water and cook on low for 8 hours. After cooking, drain the excess liquid, reserving it.
(If using canned beans) Open the can. Drain. Reserve the liquid.
In a powerful blender (like a Vitamix) or in a food processor, blend the tahini, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt on high for 1-2 minutes. Add a bit of the reserved liquid from the beans if needed.
Add the chickpeas and blend on high, stopping to taste as needed.
Once the hummus is super smooth stop the machine and add the smoked paprika and sumac and pulse a few times.
Store extras in a mason jar, but it's very important that you immediately put some in a bowl, sprinkle sesame seeds, parsley, more smoked paprika, and a tiny bit of sumac on top, and then make a pig out of yourself while you devour it.
This post contains affiliate links and we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you if you click through and make a purchase. This allows me to continue to provide free content, and I only share products that I use and love myself. Thank you for your support!
Oh my gosh, I have to try this! I keep trying to make hummus at home and it is pretty grody sometimes. – I also didn’t know that Costco had smoked paprika. How could I have missed this in all of my Costco trips???
Thank you!
Oh honey, you need an entire afternoon at Costco just to explore! Too often we race in there and race out and miss some awesome steals. To Costco with you – post haste!
If you have a Mediterranean store you can get to…get the tahini there. Seems positively CHEAP. And, they tend to have super cheap spices too…
I wish we did! We have 1 Asian store that doubles as a salon.
My sister in law makes a good hummus. I will definitely have to compare the recipes. She lives in Chicago where they have all the awesome ethnic stores. My po-dunk town sucks! Even though, there is a big University down the street from my house. We don’t have Costco or Fred Meyer. We have Kroger and there isn’t a bulk spice section. We also have Meijer, Martins and Walmart…..not a good selection at all. They all blow!
Oh I’m so sad for you! It sounds like your grocery set up is less than ideal. Have you looked at Amazon Marketplace? They have some good deals on groceries (fresh and staples) and some of them if you set up a “subscribe and save” you get discounts.
I live out in the boonies in rural Alberta, no chance of finding tahini within 100 miles, so I make my own:
TAHINI
1/2 cup sesame seeds
3 tablespoons sesame oil (or olive oil)
Toast the seeds in a nonstick frying pan, stirring/shaking constantly so you get them just starting to turn golden, not black. Blend with sesame oil – I used my trusty Braun hand-blender. Stir before adding to any recipe.
Yum, thank you!
Thank you for making me laugh and giving us an excellent recipe for hummus. That is all.
You are welcome!
That is all.
;-D
I make lousy hummus. Thanks for sharing your recipe! Also, I’m new here, so I didn’t realize you live near Seattle. My sister and her family live in Lynnwood. Yesterday I booked our tickets to see her next month? I squealed in delight…not for seeing my sister but for the produce I’ll have while there. I’m in Texas. It’s hot, dry and the avocados suck. Pike place, here I come.
Love Pikes Place!!!!! Our summer doesn’t start until July, so sorry about your visit timing!
I have been reading for a while but never commented… I live in the south sound and if you are headed to Puyallup Saturday the Fife Costco is a business center. It carries things regular Costco does not, like giant jars of tahini for CHEAP! I am also wondering if you are willing to share your CSA resource for bulk fruit? I can all summer and would love to check that out!
We’ll be at the fair all day on Saturday, but it sounds like a field trip is in my future some day soon to fife!
Shoot me an email with your city and how far you’d be willing to travel for the fruit. Remember it’s 5 pick ups during the season.
Would you please, please expound on the CSA fruit box thingy you mention???
I live in Texas and I’m unaware of any such program here.
A local company organizes the whole thing, and I pay them a flat fee at the beginning of the season for 100 pounds of fruit. It comes in 5 segements over the growing season and I get 20 lbs each time.
It works out to like $1.69 a lb or something for organic local fruit. Cherries, peaches, apples, pears, and apples again. Our area is known for our cherries, and still they’re easily $4 a lb for non-organic. It’s a heck of a deal!
I tend to bastardize, er, adjust my recipes according to my preferences. Along with copious amounts of garlic, I add toasted onion powder and dried basil to my hummus. If I dress it up a little, my husband will eat it. I have been using canned, rinsed, garbanzo beans. However, I have ordered 5lbs of Palouse Brand garbanzo beans from Pullman, Wa. I like the idea of buying local. Well at least from my state. I live on the west side near Puyallup. I am getting ready to make some hummus and toppenade. My version of toppenade omits the anchovy but includes plenty of shredded Parmesan cheese, garlic and basil. Besides serving it with chips or crackers, I use about a 1/4 cup toppenade, a few tbl of olive oil and toss with hot pasta for a quick dinner entree.
YUM!!!!!!!! I love tapenade, but hate the anchovies. sounds like your version is a great combo!
I went to WSU, so thanks for supporting Pullman farmers!
Sarah, I went to WSU!!! Back in the early 80’s. How fun to find that connection!! Thanks for the hummus recipe. Planning to try it soon!
Go Cougs! Let’s get some Cougar Gold, and hit up Ferdinands for some ice cream!
Sarah,
I went to the library to check out the book Homemade Pantry, but my library did not have it. They are ordering because the media specialist wanted to read it too. Anyway, while I was there I found a book titled “100 Meals for $5 or Less.” it is not an organic cookbook, but the recipes can be made with organic ingredients and still be cost effective.
Jennifer
Ohhh that sounds like something I’d love to read. I’ll see if my library has it! I don’t care if a cookbook is designated “organic” or not, because obviously you can just use those organic ingredients and call it good!
I hope your book comes in soon and that you and the media specialist love it as much as Stephanie (below) and I do!
I must thank you for my newest obsession… The homemade pantry book. I downloaded the sample after reading this then had my husband read the sample and then told him “I MUST HAVE THIS BOOK”… I got the book yesterday and can not put it down. I find I want to make everything in it …. Like now…lol…
Anyway, thank you! 🙂
OMG, isn’t it awesome? I’ve only made a few things from the book, but it’s already safe to say that it’s my favorite cookbook EVER.
Have you been able to find Lyle’s Golden Syrup? I had to get some from a fancy pants store about an hour away (I was there for other things anyway) and damn that stuff is expensive! Same with the brown rice syrup! If you live in Azure Standard territory, they carry brown rice syrup for $2.50 less per jar.
instead of tahini (which is just toasted sesame seed butter) use peanut butter, it makes it less claggy in your mouth.
HTH
dxx
Love this recipe. Would also add that if you are serving it for a fancy pants dinner party (call the veggies “crudites”, pronounced “crew-dit-ay”), lay it out in a shallow dish and drizzle with olive oil and olive tapenade (or mashed up black olives). You’ll be some kind of super-hero.
Also, try zaatar next time instead of the sumac. It’s a middle eastern spice mix in the same family as thyme (I think) and it is excellent.
Found you on pinterest,I love yourblog! Thanks for sharing your recipe!
Just made your hummus…it was yummus! I followed step 4 to a “T” 🙂
So glad to hear it! I bet your breath is awful right now, LOL
We’ve been looking for a good hummus recipe, so I’ve gone through the ingredient search, myself. No joy on the Tahini at the grocery store, although I may have to check again in the peanut butter section – silly me has been looking in with the international foods. As another commenter said, you can get it and the smoked paprika (and GIANT bags of dried garbanzos, too) at the business Costco (there’s one in Lynnwood, WA, for those of us in the more northerly Puget Sound area). However, there is an awesome hole in the wall (but in a good way!) Persian grocery near my work that has both tahini and sumac, so I will definitely have to try this!
I won the “Hummus Throwdown” at work with this recipe! The only prize was the glory of the title, but I thought I’d share it with you. Woohoo! I found some roasted red pepper tapenade that looks pretty sitting on top and tastes yummy too. Thanks, after finding the recipe we’ve had lots of hummus happiness at our house this summer.
a) Thank you for telling me! Yahoo!
b) mmmm to the tapenade!
c) Hummus Throwdown? How freaking fun and delicious does that sound?
how many ounces of hummus does this make?
I’m going to guess you’re European, because most Americans would ask for it in cups!
In all honesty, I have no idea. I think I can fill up about 2 pint canning jars with 1 batch.
I am American, just curious to see how much cheaper it is than buying the mass produced hummus such as Sabra.
You must have been the one who paid attention in 7th grade math when we learned the metric system. I certainly did not! ;-D
I’ve made this several times now but like you, I tend to veer from the original and tonight made this with cannellini beans and i dare say I almost prefer it to the original version. Sometimes the garbanzo’s don’t rest on my palate well.
Just wanted you to know that my EXACT words, which I said aloud to an empty house, were ‘what the fuck is sumac?’
Also, thank you for posting this, I’m really tired of spending a ridiculous amount of money on the hummus I have been consuming lately. It’s become a staple of my regular diet the last few months and even purchasing the large size at the bulk store it’s pretty pricey. It’s definitely a snack I feel little guilt over eating (extremely large quantities of).
Ok, I am not a huge hummus person, not sure why, but I had this at your house and it was REALLY GOOD! I may have to try this out (and shock my husband 🙂 )
I love hummus and smoked paprika. I am not sure why I never combined them before.
Delicious