When it comes to purchasing food, I tend to stick to extremes. I don’t mind spending a premium for good ingredients, because I know they taste better; I’d rather only buy local free-range meat and just eat meat less often (although there are lots of other reasons to do so besides cost!), and I will definitely shell out for real vanilla extract as opposed to vanillin.
On the other extreme, though, I hate spending money on prepared foods, because the mark-up is so high, and I can often do better myself. Why spend $8 on a fancy jar of tomato sauce when I can just buy some cheap tomatoes at the market and make a better one myself? Sure, there’s the cost of my labour, but when it’s something I enjoy, I don’t mind the time.
The one prepared food that I do sometimes splurge on, however guiltily, is hummus. I know – it’s dead easy, takes no time (if you buy canned beans, like a sucker, that is), and the ingredients are always on hand (if you keep industrial-sized jars of tahini on hand like we do, at least). But store-bought hummus is soooo smooth – mine always turned out a bit grainy, which was always a bit disappointing.
No more, my friends. I found this recipe over at Natural Noshing, and it easily matches store hummus in smoothness, without any of those weird unpronounceable binder ingredients (how the hell do you say xanthan, anyways?).
The one thing I changed (and obnoxiously commented on, because I’m incapable of keeping my business to myself) is that you shouldn’t soak or cook any pulses in baking soda, because it destroys the thiamin (aka vitamin B) present in them, and you don’t want beriberi, do you?
Creamy Hummus
- 2 cups cooked chickpeas, drained (I always cook mine from dried because I’m
cheapfrugal, but feel free to use canned if you’re short on time) - 1/3 cup tahini
- juice of 2 lemons
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp cumin
- ground pepper to taste
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1/2 cup water or more
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