Homemade Hummus: It may not be the most attractive-looking food for those who are unfamiliar with it but it is among the most delicious ones: a creamy food dip (or spread) made from chickpeas.
Hummus originates from the Middle East. You can buy it ready-made in supermarkets but the taste doesn’t come anywhere close to the homemade version.
It’s easy to make, so why not do it yourself?
The first time we ate hummus, we were camped in Cusco (Peru), at the well-known Quinta Lala Campsite for overlanders. Besides using the campsite as a base to visit Machu Picchu and other famous sites in the area, we spent time with kindred spirits, sharing travel stories around campfires.
My overlanding friend Emily (@Our Open Road) is a fabulous cook and she introduced us to hummus. It immediately became one of our favorite foods.
We use hummus as a food dip for carrots, cucumber or other vegetables, and love it as a spread on our bread.
Sharing a meal at Quinta Lala with Ouropenroad friends.
What is the Perfect Recipe for Hummus?
For some, hummus is like a sacred food and, we learned, people can vigorously debate about the perfect recipe. Do you need chickpeas or garbanzo beans (apparently they are not the same as sizes differ)? Do you use garlic or not? Do you add tahini or not? Do you add parsley or coriander? Olive oil, anybody?
We will leave that discussion to others and make the one we like best. Some points relevant to our recipe:
Whether we use chickpeas or garbanzo beans depends on availability. Whichever one it is, I don’t like to use canned beans and will always cook them myself.
We love our homemade hummus as a snack with a drink in the evening, and then garlic is a great ingredient. But since we mostly eat hummus on our bread in the morning, I leave out the garlic.
I recently read about adding baking soda when cooking the chickpeas to make them softer. It’s a trick I haven’t tried yet.
I make the hummus soon after I’ve cooked the beans, when still lukewarm. Leaving the cooked chickpeas overnight in the fridge and making hummus the next morning with cold ones simply doesn’t result in anything tasty.
It is important to soak the chickpeas overnight. You will see a kind of foam developing on top of it. When you don’t soak beans, this foam causes you to feel bloated or to fart. Soaking and rinsing solve that problem.
During the soaking, I rinse the chickpeas once or twice, and I thoroughly soak them before cooking.
I cook the chickpeas in the pressure cooker with plenty of water. I cook them about 18 minutes (Another advantage of soaking is that you minimize your cooking time a lot.).
After 18-20 minutes, I turn off the heat and leave the pressure cooker closed until I can open the lit without having to unpressurerize it (pushing the valve to let go of the steam).
After cooking, keep the liquid!
2. Other Ingredients for Hummus
I have no specific measurements. I just taste and add whatever is needed until I’m happy with the result.
Since our hand blender (more on that below) is not as strong as a food processor I use a trick to prevent it from overheating (I’m not sure if that would happen but I don’t want to take the chance).
I start with about half of the chickpeas, a lot of cooking liquid and all other ingredients. Blending this makes it too liquid but I then add the rest of the chickpeas and it will result in the right consistency.
Initially I depended on a fork to mash the ingredients. This is more work and doesn’t give you such a smooth spread, but it’s good enough when you don’t have anything else.
I did that for months before we decided to invest in a good blender, the Bamix hand blender. When we bought it, we had low-voltage batteries in the Land Cruiser so we opted for the Bamix blender that uses the least power.
The blender works perfectly to blend soups.
For my homemade hummus, however, I improvise a bit to prevent the blender from overheating, as I explained above (#3 mixing the hummus).
This blender, however, is not strong enough to make smooth peanut butter or smooth green smoothies. It will stay a bit chunky. It is good enough for us, but if your car has stronger batteries, you may want a hand blender with more power.
7 thoughts on “Homemade Hummus – A Perfect Pressure Cooker, Overland Recipe”
Hallo Karin-Marijke, zijn jullie tevreden van de handmixer? Wij denken er ook over ons eentje aan te schaffen voor tijdens onze reizen. Ik zou er ook hummus mee willen maken waar wij ook zo op verzot zijn.
Is deze ook geschikt om soepen te mixen of beslag te mixen? Is een mixer met een hoger vermogen aan te raden? Ik zie dat ze deze bamix blender ook in 200 wat hebben? Kan je de staaf er helemaal uithalen zodat hij minder hoog is, voor het makkelijker opbergen. Alvast bedankt voor je reactie en nog veel plezier. Kathy & Guy (indien interesse bekijk het begin van onze blog op oneworld2travel op Tangatanga.com)
Hoi Kathy en Guy, Karin-Marijke is erg tevreden met de Bamix, ze heeft er wel een vleesmes bij gekocht, dat is een zeer klein scherp mesje. Dit vooral ook om vezelrijke groenten echt klein te hakken. Bij nader inzien was een 200 watt mixer misschien beter geweest. Zeker ook om pindakaas zelf te maken. De staaf kan je er niet uit halen. En het beste kun je hem ook verticaal bewaren, zoals per handleiding.
Hi Coen and KM,
We are also big hummus fans and the bamix is my best friend in the kitchen. It is the only piece of kit I use at home base. Never took it in the camper though ( where I use a Zyliss hand blender, of the “pull a handle on a string” variety, good for making dips but not adequate for blending soup because the container dish is too small). My bamix says 200W: same as yours? what size inverter do you have? hope you are surviving lockdown. Christine xx
Heya Christine, our Bamix is the smallest version with 140 Watt. It handles the basic stuff perfectly. We did buy a meat cutter, hoping it would chop some very stubborn green leafs, and thought about upgrading to the 200 Watt version. Especially when we started to make peanut butter ourselves. But recently we learned that by using the smaller mixing bowl, the peanuts have no more room to escape and thus no escape from the standard cutting tip. We are getting smooth peanut butter! As to the inverter we have a 300 Watt inverter that is sufficient to handle this.
Thanks for the tip about the Bamix. I had no idea I could run this kind of appliance while on the move. It even runs on a tiny Goal Zero 200X.
Conversely, it seems much more difficult to run an electric tea kettle from a portable battery or a car outlet. If someone knows a low power device that I could plug to boil water once in a while, it would be great.
Heya Phillippe, pretty amazing it runs that speed with that low Amp draw.
Boiling water is a whole different ball game and involves a lot of outside influences as well. There are a plethora 12 volt water cookers if you search on Ama or Ali. But either they require lots of juice or the plug will melt in the socket.
I did some research the other day and found an interesting discussion on the AnandTech forum. See what you make of it.
And if anyone else out there found a suitable solution. Let us know, we are all ears 😉
Interesting link… which teaches me that there may never be such a low power kettle. With my way of travelling – staying in B&Bs once in a while – I’d better fill two thermos bottles and forget about boiling water without taking out the gas stove.
Not knowing much about power usage of appliances, I was probably misled by the fact that a blender makes noise and movement, while a tea kettle is silent and seems to work gently.
Hallo Karin-Marijke, zijn jullie tevreden van de handmixer? Wij denken er ook over ons eentje aan te schaffen voor tijdens onze reizen. Ik zou er ook hummus mee willen maken waar wij ook zo op verzot zijn.
Is deze ook geschikt om soepen te mixen of beslag te mixen? Is een mixer met een hoger vermogen aan te raden? Ik zie dat ze deze bamix blender ook in 200 wat hebben? Kan je de staaf er helemaal uithalen zodat hij minder hoog is, voor het makkelijker opbergen. Alvast bedankt voor je reactie en nog veel plezier. Kathy & Guy (indien interesse bekijk het begin van onze blog op oneworld2travel op Tangatanga.com)
Hoi Kathy en Guy, Karin-Marijke is erg tevreden met de Bamix, ze heeft er wel een vleesmes bij gekocht, dat is een zeer klein scherp mesje. Dit vooral ook om vezelrijke groenten echt klein te hakken. Bij nader inzien was een 200 watt mixer misschien beter geweest. Zeker ook om pindakaas zelf te maken. De staaf kan je er niet uit halen. En het beste kun je hem ook verticaal bewaren, zoals per handleiding.
Hi Coen and KM,
We are also big hummus fans and the bamix is my best friend in the kitchen. It is the only piece of kit I use at home base. Never took it in the camper though ( where I use a Zyliss hand blender, of the “pull a handle on a string” variety, good for making dips but not adequate for blending soup because the container dish is too small). My bamix says 200W: same as yours? what size inverter do you have? hope you are surviving lockdown. Christine xx
Heya Christine, our Bamix is the smallest version with 140 Watt. It handles the basic stuff perfectly. We did buy a meat cutter, hoping it would chop some very stubborn green leafs, and thought about upgrading to the 200 Watt version. Especially when we started to make peanut butter ourselves. But recently we learned that by using the smaller mixing bowl, the peanuts have no more room to escape and thus no escape from the standard cutting tip. We are getting smooth peanut butter! As to the inverter we have a 300 Watt inverter that is sufficient to handle this.
Thanks for the tip about the Bamix. I had no idea I could run this kind of appliance while on the move. It even runs on a tiny Goal Zero 200X.
Conversely, it seems much more difficult to run an electric tea kettle from a portable battery or a car outlet. If someone knows a low power device that I could plug to boil water once in a while, it would be great.
Heya Phillippe, pretty amazing it runs that speed with that low Amp draw.
Boiling water is a whole different ball game and involves a lot of outside influences as well. There are a plethora 12 volt water cookers if you search on Ama or Ali. But either they require lots of juice or the plug will melt in the socket.
I did some research the other day and found an interesting discussion on the AnandTech forum. See what you make of it.
And if anyone else out there found a suitable solution. Let us know, we are all ears 😉
Interesting link… which teaches me that there may never be such a low power kettle. With my way of travelling – staying in B&Bs once in a while – I’d better fill two thermos bottles and forget about boiling water without taking out the gas stove.
Not knowing much about power usage of appliances, I was probably misled by the fact that a blender makes noise and movement, while a tea kettle is silent and seems to work gently.