Homemade Hummus (It’s healthy but I tried to make it healthier) ♥

I love that I have started eating healthy and the fact that I have to update the blog and also that I can get bored of eating the same stuff daily, makes me want to try out healthy alternatives to the foods I love to eat. Hummus is one of my favorite things, mainly coz it is rich in Manganese and is very very healthy, not to forget extremely tasty. I saw a recipe online the other day and I knew I had to try it. So here it goes 🙂

Method:

Soak the Chickpeas in water overnight with 1/2 tablespoon Baking Soda. In the morning, change the water and let them soak for 5 more hours. Changing the water frequently actually makes you less gassy as per the recipe. Then cook them for 90 minutes on medium low with the rest of the Baking Powder and water, till they become soft enough that they mash up when you press them between your fingers. If you’re using canned Chickpeas, you just need to get to the boiling part directly. I actually pressure cooked my Chickpeas for 10 minutes on high and they were pretty much done.
By this time, the skins of the Chickpeas were floating on top of the water and some of them were resting above the Chickpeas in the water. You need to remove them, if you can. No pressure here. But do make sure that you thoroughly wash them, even if they are mushy, coz you do not want to feel gassy later. Before you wash them, save 1 cup of the boiling water for back up. You need to get rid of all the froth and scum from the Chickpeas.

While my Chickpeas were in the pressure cooker, I just quickly dry roasted the Sesame seeds. Now you need to miss this paragraph if you already have Tahini at home, or are using Peanut Butter instead. But Tahini is basically just dry roasted Sesame Seeds blended with Olive Oil till they become a soft pourable paste. So I let the dry roasted Sesame Seeds cool a bit.
Next, in a blender I blended together the Sesame seeds (not to be used if you are using Tahini/Peanut Butter, in which case you just add the 2 tablespoons of Tahini/Peanut Butter instead of the Sesame Seeds), Garlic, Cumin, Lemon, Salt, Sugar (Optional) and threw in some Chickpeas too, and added some oil. Blended them really fine into a paste, and repeated it for all the Chickpeas and consumed the whole 1/2 cup of Olive Oil stage by stage. If you have a big enough blender though, just throw everything together and blitz. You need to have a consistency little bit thinner than what you desire, and if it gets too thick, feel free to add the cooking water from Chickpeas at this stage. Voila! You’re done. This Hummus is amazingly light and delicious, decorate it with a good drizzle of Olive Oil and sprinkle Cayenne Pepper on top. Sprinkle chopped Parsley too, but I did not have it at the moment so I just decorated it with a tiny sprig of Cilantro/Coriander.
It stores quite well! Use it as a dip with your Pita Bread, or in a Chicken Salad, or as a dip with vegetables which is my favorite way to consume them these days. Dipped in Hummus! I really recommend this recipe!