Whenever someone asks, “What’s a healthy recipe that’s easy and I can snack on?” I have a stock reply.

Hummus. (See just the recipe here).

It’s easy, it’s healthy, it’s delicious and it can go with vegetables, bread, with other sauces, or be served as a spread.

So, what is hummus and why should you make it at home?

Hummus is a mix of cooked and crushed chickpeas, also called garbanzo beans, with tahini, also known as sesame seed paste.

There are some other ingredients: lemon juice and salt, as well as a host of optional ingredients including garlic, peppers, artichoke hearts and other seasonings.

Mainly though, it’s just cooked chickpeas and tahini, blended together.

Things can get a little bit more complicated if you’re willing to take the extra step (frugal and healthy) of cooking the chickpeas yourself.

Even then, hummus is a super simple recipe.

It’s also cheap.

Adding the chickpeas to the blender.

Normally, stores sell 8-16 ounces of hummus for $3 to $8.

You need eight ounces of tahini for this recipe which sells for $3. The pound of dried chickpeas is another dollar.

It makes a full 72-ounce blender full, which is a decent return on investment.

Most of the time, I do not eat it fast enough and it begins to ferment. Not go bad, per se, but you can tell it’s fermenting after 10 days or so, despite all the lemon and lime juice in it.

This is also a great recipe if you want to take the first step toward cooking your own beans, instead of buying them in the can.

It’s forgiving, it’s delicious and no one will know they’re eating beans.

I’ve included instructions for both electric pressure cooker users (such as the InstantPot) as well as those using a slow cooker.

The finished green chili hummus, after everything has been blended.

You could also cook the beans on the stove, but I prefer one of the two plug in methods.

Because hummus is so simple, and its basic ingredients are so few, it is a type of blank slate dish that can take on any number of additional flavors.

My favorites are roasted green chiles (a New Mexico favorite) and marinated artichoke hearts. Take a look at the commercial hummus being sold in your local store: there’s pimento hummus, there’s hummus with dill, there’s hummus with ingredients it shouldn’t be paired with.

 

Goes-with-everything hummus

This hummus can be jazzed up with most anything and goes great as a side and as a dip.
Course: Side Dish
Cuisine: Mediterranean
Keyword: dip, sauce
Servings: 72 ounces
Author: Wheeler Cowperthwaite
Cost: $5

Equipment

  • Blender

Ingredients

  • 1 pound dry chickpeas or 7 cups cooked/canned chickpeas also called garbanzo beans
  • 8 ounces tahini
  • 2 tablespoons lime juice
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 3 tablespoons chopped garlic more to taste
  • Salt to taste
  • 1/3 cup reserved chickpea cooking water
  • Artichoke hearts (optional)
  • Chopped green chile, roasted or unroasted (optional)
  • Chopped peppers (optional)

Instructions

  • Soak the chickpeas overnight in cold water at a rate of three times the quantity of water to chickpeas.
  • If cooking the chickpeas in a slow cooker, cook on low for 5 to 8 hours. Make sure the chickpeas are covered with water.
  • If cooking the chickpeas in an electric pressure cooker, cover with 3-4 inches of water and set for 15-20 minutes, or 20-25 minutes on beans.
  • Drain the chickpeas, reserving 1⁄3 cup of the cooking water.
  • Add 2⁄3 of the chickpeas (or all, to make a creamier hummus) into a blender or food processor, along with the lemon juice. When blending, a little more liquid can help facilitate the process. Add a few tablespoons of cooking water as needed.
  • Add the tahini and continue blend until everything is mixed. Once the chickpeas blend with the tahini, the color should change to a lighter shade of yellow.
  • Decant the mixture into a mixing bowl and add into the blender the garlic, the lime juice, the olive oil and, if using, the artichoke hearts or other ingredients and blend. Add the new mixture into the mixing bowl and stir until well combined.
  • Add salt, or garlic salt, to taste. Start with two teaspoons. Just enough salt will make the flavors of the hummus pop.
  • Add the rest of the chickpeas, either only briefly blended or whole, depending on texture desires.
  • Refrigerate or enjoy immediately, The hummus will get just a little bit better and thicken after it has been refrigerated.

 

See just the recipe here.

See the full album of photos on Flickr.

 

The cooked chickpeas (garbanzo beans) after they have been strained. The flecks of red are from red chiles they cooked with.

 

Lemon juice helps the blending process and adds a necessary acidity.

 

I add garlic (chopped) to the blender before adding the garbanzo beans.

 

Roasted green chiles, before they are diced and thrown into the blender. They were roasted on the barbecue.

 

You can get the perishable Trader Joe’s tahini sauce ($2.99 per 8 oz container) or get a larger container at an Asian market.

 

The tahini (sesame seed paste) is added on top of the chickpeas, in the blender.

 

The finished green chili hummus, after everything has been blended.

In New Mexico, Chile is king. No questions. No debate. Red, or green? Christmas? (Christmas is both red and green.)

(If you want just the recipe, see it here.)

Zhug, after the cilantro and jalapenos and citrus and salt have been blended together. Ready for some fiery consumption.

Cilantro certainly plays a second fiddle, in salsa, as do tomatoes, but still: chile, cilantro, these are the building blocks of many New Mexican meals. So, what does that have to do with zhug? Well, combine those two things into one dish. Blew your mind, didn’t it?

Chile and cilantro are not the sole property of New Mexican cuisine and lots of other cultures do complimentary things with them that I think we should all copy, or at least, pay attention to.

That New Mexico can learn a lot from other parts of the world, including from the middle-east, where zhug originated.

What is zhug, anyway?

It can either be described as a cilantro-based hot sauce (and, depending on how you make it, I mean Hot) or as chile and cilantro pesto. Take your pick. I prefer the former, partially because I make mine scalding.

It’s a very simple sauce. Put cilantro, lemon juice, lime juice and, important here, peppers, into a blender. Blend. Blend, blend, blend.

That’s it. Maybe add some salt, to taste. And you’re done. It’s a pesto-like hot sauce or a hot pesto. Either way, zhug goes well with pita bread and tabbouleh, with some hummus. Maybe you’re going to make zucchini fritters. Add some on the side, along with tzatziki.

I should add, this sauce is very dear to my heart. Being such a fan of cilantro, even naming my blog after a proclivity for it, I gotta say. We all should love zhug.

Zhug

This Yemeni/Somali hot sauce goes great on most things, including rice, fritters and in conjunction with hummus.
Prep Time15 minutes
Cook Time5 minutes
Total Time20 minutes
Course: Side Dish
Cuisine: Somali, Yemeni
Keyword: hot sauce, sauce
Servings: 4 people
Author: Wheeler Cowperthwaite
Cost: $5

Equipment

  • Blender or food processor

Ingredients

  • 10-20 hot peppers (jalapeno) rinsed and chopped (de-seed if heat is an issue)
  • 1-3 bunches of cilantro washed and chopped
  • 3-6 garlic cloves chopped
  • ¼ teaspoon ground cardamom or seeds from 6 cardamom pods crushed
  • ¼ teaspoon ground coriander (cilantro seeds)
  • ½ teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 tbsp lime juice more to taste
  • ¼ to ½ cup lemon juice more or less to taste
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • Salt to taste
  • 1/4 cup Chopped mint optional

Instructions

  • Chop the cilantro, peppers and garlic.
  • Put all the ingredients, sans salt, in a food processor or blender. Blend until it reaches desired consistency.
  • Add a small amount of salt, to taste.

 

If you want the full gallery of full-quality photos, they are licensed under a Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution-only license. See them here.

 

Jalapenos in a blender, before being blended, to make Zhug. Add liquid (lemon/lime juice) to aid in the blending process.

Cilantro, being being chopped up and put in a blender to make Zhug.

Tzatziki, a yogurt sauce made with lemon juice, dill, and a few other ingredients, is a fantastic side to a variety of dishes, including zucchini fritters, curry fried rice and hummus, especially when paired with pita bread.

(Skip to just the recipe)

It also goes very well as a compliment to zhug (a hot sauce made of cilantro, peppers and lemon/lime juice) creating what for me is the ultimate quadfecta in pita and falafel sides: zhug, Tzatzikihummus and tabbouleh.

Tzatziki poured over curry fried rice makes an easy and delicious meal. All this is missing is some zhug.

There are a couple of things to consider when making tzatziki, aside from how to spell it.

The first is what kind of yogurt to use. I use full-fat plain yogurt or, if I’m going through a DIY phase, I use yogurt I’ve made from whole milk.

Plain full-fat yogurt is superior (in my opinion) to the more popular and prevalent fat-free and 99 percent fat free options because it has less sugar.

Yogurt makers add sugar to make up for the taste of the lost fat. Naturally occurring fat is a lot more healthy than artificially added sugar. Less sugar, less problems.

Dill piles up in a container of yogurt being used to mix the tzatziki.

Second,  good dill, which can be surprisingly hard to find. When I find it, I buy a large bunch. You can also add some chopped mint to the batch, if you’re feeling a little adventerous or have mint on hand. If I have it, I add it. If I don’t have any available, then it doesn’t go in.

Tzatziki is more like art than science. The amount of lemon juice used, of dill, of lime juice, of salt, of garlic, everything is up for interpretation.

For just the recipe, see the page here.

Wheeler's Dill-icious tzatziki

This yogurt staple is heavy on the dill, lemon, and lime and offsets the saltiness in many foods.
Prep Time30 minutes
Total Time30 minutes
Course: Side Dish
Cuisine: Mediterranean
Servings: 2 cups
Author: Wheeler Cowperthwaite

Ingredients

  • 2 cups plain yogurt
  • 2+ tbsp finely chopped fresh dill more as desired/to taste
  • 2+ tbsp lemon juice more to taste
  • 1-2 tbsp lime juice
  • 2 cloves garlic, finely minced
  • 1 pinch black pepper
  • salt to taste
  • 1 tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped (optional)

Instructions

  • If thicker tzatziki is desired, either buy “Greek” yogurt or strain regular yogurt by placing a cheesecloth in a strainer, and the strainer in a bowl, and pouring the unstrained yogurt into the cheesecloth lining. Cover and let sit in the refrigerator overnight or for 8 hours.
  • Chop garlic, dill and, it if is being used, mint.
  • Mix yogurt in a medium bowl with all of the ingredients except for salt, until will combined.
  • Salt to taste immediately and use or refrigerate for 8+ hours and then salt to taste.