Ad: Food Experiment: Home Made Hummus

Hey all! hope you enjoyed our previous post about the Bachelorette party! as the introduction suggests, we've been gone for way way too long. Well now most of us have more free time, so you can expect more posts! So I realised that it's been a while since I last did a post on a food experiment! I've done quite a few, though not as many as I'd prefer, so today I'll share with you my experience on my first and second attempts of trying to make hummus at home!

Ok some of you may already know what is hummus, especially if you are familiar with Middle Eastern cuisine, but for those of you who do not know, hummus needs some introduction! Hummus is a dip that is primarily made of chick peas, or garbanzo beans, or kacang kuda in Malay. People usually eat it with bread. Some prefer to have it with flat bread, some like it with those fluffy Arab breads, some like it with rice. Personally I think hummus goes well with a lot of things! I've had it with all those mentioned above, and also paratha or roti canai, normal white bread or whole-meal bread and chapati too. If you can't already tell, I love my hummus!

Photo taken from: hummus-recipes.blogspot.com

I decided to make hummus at home because I could only have it whenever we (usually me and my familiy) went to Middle Eastern restaurants, and that certainly is not often. Then sometime last year, I was in Village Grocer, a supermarket, and found that they were selling commercialised hummus imported from Australia. Lol I found it funny too. So I bought it and was quite happy with it, although of course it did not taste as fantastic as freshly-made hummus. It was quite expensive. One small container of it (not sure how of the net weight) costs around RM15. Maybe even more. My mom was not planning to put it in the grocery list every week that's for sure. So a couple of months ago I was having this crazy craving for hummus in the middle of the night. Obviously I couldn't go out to get it, so I had to settle with Googling recipes. Then I realised how easy it is!

Ok so what you'll need to make hummus at home are:
1. 1 can of chickpeas
2. A few cloves of garlic
3. Fresh lemon (for lemon juice)
4. White sesame seeds
5. Olive oil (around a few table spoons to 1/4 cup)
6. Water (around 1/3 cup)
7. Salt to taste!

The main equipment you need is a blender!

Photo taken from: aidan.com.my

I used Kimball's chickpeas simply because it was the cheapest I could find. Any brand of canned chickpeas will do. I suppose you can also use fresh chickpeas and boil them, but according to a few websites, canned chickpeas work better and gives a better texture.

Ok so the first thing you need to do is to roast the sesame seeds. How much you need depends on how much hummus you want to make, but for one can of chickpeas, around 2-3 table spoons would be enough. Just heat a pan, add the sesame seeds to the pan and toss them. You only need to heat them up. This only takes a minute or so, because you must take it off the stove before the sesame seeds turn brown. Once that is done, put the roasted sesame seeds in the blender. Add in two table spoons of olive oil.

Next, empty the can of chickpeas into a sifter so that the liquid in the can is drained out. Then, run some water over it to rinse it. After that, add the drained and rinsed chickpeas to the blender. The next step is to chop some cloves of garlic. It doesn't have to look pretty, because after all, everything is going into the blender anyway! Again, add that to the blender. After that, add about a teaspoon of salt and squeeze some lemon juice into the blender. Be careful not to add too much, because sometimes lemon juice can be bitter. You don't want the hummus to be bitter (that was what happened to my first batch of hummus..thankfully it was only slightly bitter). If you think there isn't enough olive oil, you can add more later.

Now that everything is in the blender, switch it on and start blending. Continue blending until you think all the ingredients has mixed well and until you are satisfied with the texture. It's ok to stop and check the hummus as many times as you want. Once you're satisfied with the texture, check its taste. If you think it needs a more citrus taste, squeeze more lemon juice in. If you think it needs more salt, add a little bit of salt at a time. But yea, basically you're done! I was really satisfied with the overall taste. I had hummus every day for two weeks lol. Definitely was not bored of it! Oh yes, keep it in an air-tight container in the refrigerator. It will last about two weeks. I wouldn't recommend keeping it for any longer because it may go bad.

Now let me help you run through the cost of making hummus at home. One can of chickpeas costs around RM2.70. Garlic..well I don't know how much is garlic, but you only need around 2-3 cloves so maybe add RM0.20 for that? Then you need about 1/4 cup of olive oil, maybe that costs around RM3.00. Then one lemon costs around RM2, but you won't need the lemon juice of the whole lemon, so maybe RM1 to that. And salt..well you already have salt at home. Sesame seeds..doesn't cost too much, maybe RM3.00 but that's for about a whole cup of sesame seeds, so maybe RM1.00? Ok that totals up to be around RM7.90...much cheaper than the commercialised one and you get double or maybe even triple the portion! So easy to make too!

I mentioned that my first batch went wrong because the lemon juice made it a little bitter? well I made a second batch and made a big mistake of adding too much water so it was too runny. The taste was still ok, but just runny. Of course the only way to not make it so runny is to blend more chickpeas, but since I didn't have anymore, I had to have it just like that, which was still bearable but maybe I love hummus that much. Unfortunately I didn't take photos, but I can always add that the next time I make more. Hope you'll have fun making hummus at home.

Alright, I gotta go now. I'm actually in the middle of another experiment now. It seems it's not going all that well, but I'm going to see if I can salvage it! Til next time!

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