Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

The Only Hummus Recipe You Will Ever Need

Editor’s Note:

Following his pilgrimage to the Sabra Dipping Company plant, we asked author Orr Shtuhl to provide us with his secret recipe that made hummus a mainstay in the Shtuhl household.

Shtuhl Family Hummus Recipe

Although neither of my grandmothers made hummus at home, my parents, brother, and I make hummus using a method so often ascribed to grandmas everywhere: judge by sight; measure nothing.

Ingredients:

Some chickpeas

Some baking soda

Some tahini

Some garlic

Some cumin (or not)

A lemon

1. Take a one-pound bag of dry chickpeas and pour half of it into a bowl or pot (if I ever started with another size bag, I’d be lost). Cover with cold water and let soak overnight.

2. Drain chickpeas, cover with fresh water and two hard squeezes from the baking soda box, and boil until they’re soft as baby food. Drain the cooked chickpeas. In case of steam burns, curse softly.

3. In a food processor, do as Michael Solomonov does and blend 2-3 cloves of garlic with juice from half a lemon. Let garlic macerate in the acid for a few minutes, snacking on the hot chickpeas to pass the time.

4. Add tahini to the food processor: Use a soup spoon to scoop out the two most gigantic gobs of solids you can manage, then tip over the jar and pour in some oil. Then, add water equal to the amount of tahini, knowing it will never be enough and you’ll add more later. Add salt.

5. Blend the whole thing together with the chickpeas for a few minutes, until completely smooth. Taste, and realize you forgot to add cumin. It’s ok, try to remember next time. In fact, many people vow that cumin isn’t traditional in hummus to begin with. Congratulate yourself for upholding tradition.

6. Taste for salt, acid, and richness, adding more of the ingredients if necessary. If you eat hummus straight from the fridge, your consistency here should be short of soupy but still uncomfortably thin; it will thicken up when it cools.

7. Serve hummus immediately. After dinner, transfer leftovers to a container, and enjoy the chef’s snack of licking the spatula. Do not lick food processor blade (personal experience).

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.