Easy Homemade Instant Pot Hummus Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why doesn't my homemade hummus taste good? ›

If your hummus is the right consistency or thickness but it tastes dry and pasty, it might be lacking a bit of oil. This recipe relies on the tahini to give it creaminess as I don't find olive oil makes enough of a difference to warrant the extra calories.

Absolutely, I just made a batch of our family hummus and it's amazing—infinitely better than the awful junk you buy in the refrigerator section of the grocery store. We like ours spicy and garlicy. We use fresh garlic, lemon juice, and real premium olive oil. It's not difficult, expensive, or labor-intensive.

Baking soda: Adding baking soda to the chickpeas helps make the legume easier to digest, softer, and makes them easy to peel. Don't skip this ingredient!

You might need more tahini, garlic, lemon and/or salt and very likely more chickpea water. Add a bit of each as you need, the recipe explains. "Blitz the hummus until very smooth, a few minutes at least. Don't worry about the hummus being too loose; it will thicken as it sits."

Add Some Nice Spice

Spices like paprika, cayenne pepper and sumac all lend a marvelous layer of nuance to a classic hummus dip. Seasoning your hummus with spices is perfect when you want to supercharge your hummus dishes with flavor. This trick also works with making canned soup taste better.

Next, enhance the blank slate of flavor with a few squeezes of lemon juice, a sprinkling of garlic salt, a turn of freshly cracked pepper, a heavy-handed sprinkle of paprika, and a generous drizzle of your nicest olive oil. Bonus points if you have an herby olive oil on hand with a little color to it.

Dried chickpeas provide better flavor than canned. Overcooking the chickpeas in water with baking soda makes them easier to blend. Puréeing the chickpeas while they're still hot lets you use a blender instead of a food processor for smoother texture.

Does hummus need tahini? You bet! In fact, tahini is one of hummus' main ingredients, along with chickpeas and olive oil. That's why our favorite dip can be so rich and delicious—in hummus, tahini adds smoothness to the texture, as well as a wide variety of vitamins and minerals.

Store-bought hummus may have a longer shelf life than homemade, depending on how it is prepared. But both varieties should last up to 7 days in the refrigerator (for prepared hummus this applies once the container is opened). Like any food, hummus is perishable and is prone to spoilage.

If you feel adventurous, try replacing the tahini with an equal amount of peanut butter, sunflower seed butter, Greek yogurt, chopped roasted peppers, pitted olives, roasted beets, steamed sweet potato, avocado, or thawed frozen peas, to name just a few possibilities.

How long does homemade hummus last? ›

Homemade varieties will generally last anywhere from 3-4 days, whereas store-bought brands generally lasts 6-7 days after opening. These estimates assume that it maintains a refrigerated temperature; as we mentioned already, the shelf life of hummus is diminished greatly if it does not remain chilled.

Hummus freezes well for about four months. The longer you freeze hummus, the more likely it is to change flavor and texture. If you have a lot of hummus to freeze but want to thaw it out in small amounts, use several freezer bags to divide it. Place your desired amount in the bag and press out as much air as possible.

The Ice Cube Trick for Hummus

For extra light and fluffy hummus, adding an ice cube to the hummus mixture before blending helps incorporate air into the mixture. Only add an ice cube if you're using a heavy-duty blender or food processor that can handle chopping ice.

Tahini is sesame butter, and to make creamy hummus, the secret is to first turn that into sesame cream! To do that, you need to emulsify the tahini in a water based liquid first. This will not happen if you just put everything into a food processor all at once!'

Sometimes just an extra pinch of salt can transform a bland hummus into a terrific hummus where all the flavors come together perfectly.

You may be using poor quality olive oil, compared to what they use in restaurants. You might be using a different variety of cumin. I have noticed a difference between Indian cumin and the cumin you usually get in typical western grocery stores. You might not be using enough oil.

It tastes bad - the amount of lemon and tahini is off. It has preservatives and it has ingredients that are unnecessary (like salt), it uses soy bean oil, and other stuff like locust bean gum that I'm guessing is added for a smoother texture.

The taste:

I loved it. I have to admit it tasted a little bit different to the shop-bought hummus I am used to, but definitely in a good way. I added more than a squeeze of lemon juice and it had a really fresh taste and just tasted light and healthier, yet the texture also felt more substantial than shop-bought.