Before you hit up Hummus Elijah on GrabFood, consider making your hummus at home. This creamy chickpea dip, rich with tahini and a punch of lemon juice, can feed you around the clock. It's brunch, merienda, an appetizer, even dinner, whether served with pita bread or tucked in a shawarma wrap.
Cody's friends swear that he makes the best homemade hummus. To make it, bring out your food processor. You'll need it to blitz garlic, canned chickpeas, lemon juice, olive oil, and tahini.
This sesame paste is a major ingredient for hummus, but can be hard to find at the grocery. And if you do, it's usually pretty expensive. Good thing you can make tahini at home!
For homemade tahini, grind 1 cup of white sesame seeds in a food processor or high-speed blender until coarse and ground up. Add 1–2 tablespoons olive oil and blitz into a smooth paste. If your tahini looks too thick, add more oil, a tablespoon at a time, to thin it out.
Prepare chickpeas: Drain canned chickpeas and transfer to a medium-sized bowl. Fill bowl with water. Using your hands, remove the skin around the chickpeas as much as you can. You can’t really get them all out and that’s okay; it’s still edible. Drain chickpeas and set aside.
Blend ingredients: In a blender or food processor, add garlic and pulse until coarse (you can also mince it with a knife). Pour tahini and lemon juice into the food processor and pulse for 30 seconds until it forms a thick paste. Add olive oil, salt, and cumin. Blend again until incorporated.
Add chickpeas: Add chickpeas in small batches, then blend each batch into a smooth, even mixture before adding more. If your mixture looks thick, add a tablespoon of water to thin it out. Transfer hummus to a shallow bowl and top with olive oil. Enjoy with pita, carrots, cucumbers, or chips.
You have several tahini substitutes to choose from, but keep in mind that they aren't 1:1 replacements—you'll need to hack it and taste, taste, taste as you go.
To substitute tahini, you'll need sesame oil + a creamy base, like:
We don't recommend it. While Chinese sesame paste is also made from sesame seeds, the differences in consistency (it's chunky and less fluid) and flavor (roasted and robust) make it too distant from tahini to use in hummus.
