Recipe Rut Solution #14

Again time has flown by without an update.  We just got back from a great beach vacation last weekend and now it's back to the grind, although we are both looking forward to the cooler weather of fall.

Since Adam works from home, he is always looking for something new to eat for lunch.  Lately, he has been eating alot of hummus with vegetables or pita chips and I have been taking some to work as well.  Those little containers of Sabra hummus, while tasty, can be expensive, so I decided to make some myself. 

Yesterday after work, I headed to the store to find hummus ingredients, especially Tahini, which I learned is sesame puree.  After wandering around for awhile wondering where it might be, I located a can next to the peanut butter.

When I got home, I got to work on roasted red pepper hummus:

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup chopped jarred roasted red peppers
• One 15-ounce can chickpeas
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1/4 cup Tahini
• Half of a large garlic clove, minced
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt

 Directions:

 

1.  In the bowl of a food processor, combine Tahini and lemon juice. Process for 1 minute. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl then turn on and process for 30 seconds. 

 

2.  Add the olive oil, minced garlic, cumin, cayenne pepper and the salt to whipped  Tahini and lemon juice. Process for 30 seconds, scrape sides and bottom of bowl then process another 30 seconds.

 

 

3.  Open can of chickpeas, drain liquid then rinse well with water. Add half of the chickpeas to the food processor then process for 1 minute. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl, add remaining chickpeas and process for 1 to 2 minutes or until thick and quite smooth.

 

4.  Add peppers to hummus and continue to process for 1 to 2 minutes or until smooth.

 

 

Thoughts:  This is an inexpensive alternative to the containers of hummus at the store.  The Tahini was $5, but the container will make four or five batches and the chick peas and peppers were less than one dollar each.  The most time consuming part of the process was cleaning my food processor when I was done.  Overall, I would definitely make this again, and maybe add less olive oil to make it a bit thicker.  It only took about 15 minutes to mix up and is easy to spoon into a small tupperware to take to work.