How to Make Hummus

Hello everyone! Welcome to Dede’s Mediterranean Kitchen.

Today, we’re going to be making one of the most popular dishes that have come out of the Mediterranean and the Middle East. It’s called hammus. Now the word hammu is actually an Arabic term that means chickpeas. Chickpeas they’ve bag about 10,000 years in the histories of all the nations that surround the Mediterranean. Well, today I'm going to show you how you can serve it as a main dish, as a side dish, as an appetizer it’s really simple to make and I'm going to show you how to put it together.

You want to start off with chickpeas or garbanzo beans. Now you can either buy them in a can at the store for 16 or 15-ounce can or you can make them fresh. If you want to make them fresh, what you are going need to do is soak about a cup and a half of dried garbanzo beans in water. After you soak them, you want to pour off the water and then put them in the pot, cover the pot with water to the brim and then let them boil for about an hour. You can also add about a half teaspoon of baking soda, it helps them becomes softer. Now after an hour, you want to test the chickpea and see if it is soft to the touch. See, it falls apart like that.

Now, some people also like to peel the skins off of the chickpeas. I personally, it doesn’t matter as long as you have a good blender you won't even know that the skins are still there. After the chickpeas, you're going to need tahini. Now tanini is actually ground sesame seeds. They're toasted and they’re ground up with a really good blender. It’s much easier to buy tahini already done at any local grocery store. We’re also going to need about a half cup of lemon juice, ¼ cup of Mediterranean or Greek yogurt. I have four mint leaves, I have two to three cloves of minced garlic, I have some water, some salt and I also have some citric acid.

Now citric acid is a form of lemon that’s concentrated. If you're saying “oh my god, where I'm going to get this”, you can get it at your local grocery store. It’s usually found in the spice section at the grocery store. Now the only time we’re really going to need it is if you’ve made your hammus and the consistency is perfect just like you want it, you don’t want anymore watery than already is, you can add some citric acid if you would like it more lemony.

You're going to need a really good blender; you can get this at any of your local stores it’s really not that hard to find. We’re going to put the chickpeas in here, now we’re going to add the lemon juice. Now we’re going to add our yogurt, I like using Greek yogurt. If you can't use yogurt or you don’t like to eat yogurt, you can just substitute that with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Olive oil is very healthy and you can find that anywhere. We’re going to add our tahini I like to add everything to the blender at once. So that’s just easy like that. The garlic, I like to mince the garlic ahead of time just because if you add the whole clove into the blender sometimes you'll add up with the big trunk of garlic and you really don’t want that for any of your guests while they're enjoying their hammus.

I'm going to add the mint leaves and then just about a half teaspoon of salt. You can always taste the salt content later on after it’s blended. See if it needs a little bit more water, a little bit more citric acid, and lemon juice whatever you need to add to it. Now remember, you're making this to suite your flavor. If you don’t like it too garlicky, you don’t have to add all that garlic. If you like it more lemony, you can add more lemon juice. You're making it for your selves so enjoy it.

So you blend it for about a minute, you want to check the consistency and the flavors. Just stir it up a little; if it is too thick like peanut butter, you are going want to add a tablespoon of water. If it needs more lemon juice, you can add some citric acid or lemon juice whatever you like. So let’s taste it, it taste perfect. If you don’t like mint and you don’t want to add any mint leave to the hammus, you really don’t have to. You can add any other vegetables or seasoning that you like because this dish is so versatile. You can add roasted red peppers, you can add olives, you can add basil, rosemary, I mean anything that you thing would go good with it. You can add it to flavor up the dish. So now, I'm going to show you how we serve this up.

I have this nice set of plates and what we are going to do is we are going to put the hammus in the middle and then the pitas chips around it. We’re going to plate some of it just in the middle of this dish. And you want to keep a little bit in the middle and then form a little group because we’re going to put some olive oil we’re going to decorate this really nice. Now remember, people want to eat with their eyes, as well as tasting the food, so you want to make the food really presentable and pretty for everyone.

I'm going to cut up some red pepper just because the read is a nice contrast with the hammus. I also have some chopped up parsley; I have some paprika, some olives. I have some chickpeas that I reserve down the side just so I can decorate it. I mean anything that you think would go on top of this, you can do. So I'm going to start with putting some chickpeas in the middle just like that and I may get these red peppers and this is going to go around, like that. You can put some olives in the middle; olives go great with this dish as well. Some parsley just like that in the corners, I mean the colors really make the food vibrant. I have some ready made pita chips; you can buy this at any of your stores you can use fresh pita, if you like the softer pita. Just put it around the dish like that, these would be served as a side dish. You know with chicken or meat put the pita. I just put a little bit of paprika just around the edges, if you don’t like paprika you don’t really need to add this. Some people like to add cayenne pepper because it adds a little bit of a kick. And then just a little bit of olive oil, olive oil is really healthy and it goes great with this.

So let me show you how to serve this also as an appetizer. What I have here is some pre made pie crust. And what you can do is if you don’t have a piping bag, you can just get any plastic bag and you can put some of the hammus in it. And then you can actually pipe it that out into these and it looks just amazing. And you just want to cut off a little bit of a corner, not too much. Then pipe into each little bite, just like that. Just want to give them a little flavor; this is great before a big meal specially if everyone hungry. So just like that, you put a little parsley on top. You can put a little bit of paprika on top just like that and look how pretty those are.

Next, I'm I want to show you one more variation of the dish and this can actually be served as a main dish. Get a nice a little dish and you want to put some of the hammus in it. And then what I did was I browned some ground beef. I added about a half teaspoon salt and I also added a little bit of seven spices. If you don’t have seven spices that are okay, it’s a seasoning that’s used a lot in the Mediterranean. If you don’t have that you can just use black pepper, it works great. No hassle and what you are going to do is top the hammus with the ground beef just like that. I also toasted some pine nuts with a little bit of butter just until they're lightly brown. And I'm also going to put that on top, it add a great nutty flavor to the dish. You can throw a little bit of parsley on top of that too and that’s it.

Now remember, you can refrigerate hammus in the refrigerator in an airtight container for about a week. If necessary, you can actually freeze it and it stays good in the freezer for about a month, but nothing is as good as fresh hammus. You just saw how easy it is to make, how readily the ingredients are available to everyone, why buying it from the store when you can make it yourself. I hope you enjoyed this episode of DeDe’s Mediterranean Kitchen and join me again.