Easy Homemade Hummus
My roasted garlic hummus is creamy, smooth, and absolutely packed with rich, mellow garlic flavour thanks to a whole bulb of slow-roasted garlic. It’s the kind of dip I can never stop scooping - perfect with warm flatbread, crisp veggies, or dolloped onto salads and wraps. I love how roasting the garlic gives it that buttery depth without any harshness. Simple to make, endlessly versatile, and a staple in my fridge.
Ingredients
- 400g tin of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
- 3 tbsp tahini
- 3 tsp roasted garlic paste OR 3 cloves garlic
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/2 tsp ground cumin
- 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp sea salt flakes (or more, as needed)
- Juice of 1 lemon
- Up to 60ml water
To Serve
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Smoked paprika
Instructions
- In a food processor or NutriBullet, add the chickpeas, tahini, garlic, olive oil, cumin, smoked paprika, salt, and lemon juice. Blitz until well combined.
- Next, add the water 1 tbsp at a time, to loosen the mixture until rich, smooth and creamy.
- Transfer to a serving dish, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, and sprinkle with smoked paprika.
Notes
- The secret to ultra-smooth hummus is blending it for longer than you think. A NutriBullet or high-powered blender gives you a creamier texture than a standard food processor, but both work well.
- I use a NutriBullet for making hummus. It's powerful enough to break down the chickpeas without overheating.
- Roasted garlic paste gives a sweet, mellow flavour. If you're using fresh garlic cloves, you might want to start with 2 and add the third if you like a stronger garlic hit.
- Good quality tahini makes a real difference. Look for one that's runny and smooth rather than thick and separated. Stir it well before measuring.
- If your hummus is too thick, add more water a tablespoon at a time. If it's too thin, add a bit more tahini or chickpeas.
- For an even smoother hummus, peel the chickpeas before blending. It's time-consuming but makes a noticeable difference in texture.
- Save a few whole chickpeas to scatter on top when serving for a traditional presentation.
- This extra virgin olive oil is perfect for drizzling over the finished hummus. A good quality oil really shines here.
- Hummus keeps in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days. It may thicken as it sits, so stir through a splash of water before serving if needed.
- You can freeze hummus in a freezer-safe container for up to 3 months. Defrost in the fridge overnight and stir well before serving. The texture may be slightly thinner after freezing, so you might need to stir through a bit more tahini to thicken it up.
What I Cook With
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Nutrition Information:
Yield:
10Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 150Total Fat: 10gSaturated Fat: 1gUnsaturated Fat: 8gSodium: 319mgCarbohydrates: 13gFiber: 3gSugar: 2gProtein: 4g
Please note, this nutrition information is to be used as a guide only. Nutrition information isn’t always accurate.
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Easy Homemade Hummus Recipe
This easy homemade hummus is the recipe I’ve been making for years, and the one I genuinely can’t live without. Tinned chickpeas, tahini, fresh lemon juice, olive oil, cumin, smoked paprika, sea salt flakes, and your choice of roasted garlic paste for something mellow or fresh garlic for a proper punch. Ready in under ten minutes and better than anything you’ll find on a supermarket shelf.
A Childhood Built on Proper Hummus
I grew up in south western Sydney, where it didn’t matter where your family came from, you loved hummus. Kebabs were basically a religion, and garlic sauce or BBQ? Absolutely not. It was always hummus. On weekends, Mum and I would head to our local Turkish kebab shop on Macquarie Street Mall, where the owner knew our names and our order, and would always cut our giant chicken doner in half because one was more than enough for the two of us. Sometimes we’d grab a tub of hummus to take home too, thick, creamy, and deeply flavoured in a way that meant something.
Fast forward a few thousand kilometres and I’m living in the UK, craving that same comfort and finding only disappointment. The hummus in UK supermarkets is thin, bland, and sometimes served in a squeezy bottle, which I wish I were joking about. Even in Brisbane I struggled to find anything that came close. Nothing had the body or the depth of what I grew up with, and it was genuinely disheartening in the specific way that only a missing food from your childhood can be.
So I did what any homesick cook would do: I made my own. And this version has saved me more times than I can count. It’s thick, it’s punchy, it’s rich, and it tastes like home in a way that no tub from Coles ever has or will.
The Hummus Awakening
I didn’t realise how good I’d had it until I couldn’t get it anymore. When I first arrived in the UK I was genuinely excited to find hummus on supermarket shelves, and then I tasted it. Watery, dull, and texturally defeated. I wasted a fair amount of money on pre-made hummus before I finally accepted that it just wasn’t going to scratch the itch, and started experimenting in my own kitchen instead.
A little more tahini. A lot of garlic. A generous pour of olive oil. Lemon juice until it sings. It took a few batches to land on this version, but once I did, I never went back to buying it. It’s cheaper, it’s better, and I know exactly what’s in it. No mystery preservatives, no watery sadness, just real ingredients that I can trust. Every time I make it, it feels like a small act of reclaiming something I’d lost.
The choice of garlic is worth thinking about. Roasted garlic paste gives you something mellow and sweet, warm and deeply savoury without any sharpness. Fresh garlic gives you something bolder and more assertive. Neither is wrong, they’re just different moods, and I keep both options in my repertoire depending on what I’m making the hummus for.
The Simplest Recipe That Always Impresses
Good food doesn’t need to be complicated, and this hummus is proof of that. A handful of simple ingredients into a blender, a few minutes of processing, and you have something that will make people think you’ve spent considerably more time and effort than you actually have. I use this as a base for bruschetta, spread it into wraps, dollop it next to everything from tabbouleh to roasted vegetables, and thin it with a little water and extra lemon juice for a surprisingly excellent salad dressing.
It always impresses guests. Always. People go slightly wild for it, assuming I’ve done something complicated, when in reality I answered emails while the garlic roasted and then blitzed everything together. That’s the sweet spot of home cooking, something that tastes like genuine effort and takes very little of it.
This is a recipe with deep roots for me, and I’ll never stop making it.
Ingredient breakdown
Chickpeas
Tinned chickpeas are completely fine here and produce excellent hummus without any of the overnight soaking and boiling that dried chickpeas require. If you want to go the extra mile for an exceptionally smooth result, peeling the chickpeas before they go into the processor makes a noticeable difference to the final texture. It’s tedious but straightforward. Just rub them between your fingers and the skins slip off easily.
Tahini
The quality of your tahini matters here more than almost any other ingredient. It should be runny, smooth, and pourable straight from the jar with a nutty, slightly bitter flavour that isn’t harsh or rancid. The thick, separated paste you sometimes find at the back of the pantry is not going to give you the creamy, luxurious hummus you’re after. Stir it thoroughly before measuring because the oil separates and sits on top. Middle Eastern grocery stores reliably stock better tahini than most supermarkets.
Roasted garlic paste
Roasted garlic paste gives a sweet, mellow depth that raw garlic simply doesn’t. Raw garlic in hummus can be quite aggressive and sharp, whereas roasted garlic melts into the background and adds flavour without heat or harshness. If you’re using fresh garlic cloves instead, start with two rather than three and taste before adding the third, because fresh garlic is considerably more pungent and you can’t un-add it once it’s in the blender.
Olive oil
Olive oil goes in with everything before blitzing and contributes richness and smoothness that helps the hummus come together into a cohesive, creamy dip rather than a grainy paste. The finishing drizzle of extra virgin olive oil over the top when serving is a separate thing entirely, purely for flavour and presentation. Use your best bottle for that part because it’s going on raw and you’ll taste every bit of it.
Ground cumin
Ground cumin adds a warm, earthy undertone that is classic in Middle Eastern hummus and gives the dip a complexity beyond just chickpeas and tahini. It’s a background note rather than a dominant flavour, but it makes the hummus taste rounded and complete in a way that a plain chickpea and tahini blend wouldn’t.
Smoked paprika
Used twice: some goes into the blender with everything else for warmth and a subtle smokiness, and then a light sprinkle goes over the top with the olive oil drizzle for colour and a finishing hit of flavour. The visual contrast of the deep red paprika against the pale hummus is also just genuinely appealing and makes a home-blended hummus look properly finished.
Sea salt flakes
Hummus needs generous seasoning to taste properly balanced rather than flat. Taste after blitzing and adjust from there because the lemon juice and tahini both affect how the salt lands and you may need slightly more or less depending on your ingredients.
Lemon juice
Fresh lemon juice brightens the whole dip and cuts through the richness of the tahini and olive oil. Hummus without enough lemon tastes heavy and flat. The bottled stuff has a slightly cooked, dull flavour that you’ll notice in something this simple where every ingredient is doing visible work.
Water
Drizzled in slowly while the processor is running, water is the step that takes the hummus from thick and slightly grainy to smooth and creamy. It emulsifies with the tahini and olive oil and gives the hummus that light, airy texture you get from good restaurant hummus. Add it gradually and stop when you reach the consistency you want.
Serve this with
- As part of a mezze spread with baba ganoush, falafel, and whatever else you’ve got going on the table.
- Warm pita bread or flatbreads for dipping, because that is the correct and only truly satisfying vehicle for hummus.
- Fresh vegetables like carrot sticks, cucumber, and capsicum for something lighter alongside the bread.
