Hummus - Italian Flavored

Last night I made Indian food for dinner and found that I had too many chickpeas. My husband immediately requested that I make hummus. I have mentioned before that we eat hummus all the time and I wasn’t exaggerating.

I wanted to make a different flavor and stood in the kitchen staring at the chickpeas trying to decide how I could make another variation of hummus. Being part Italian I decided to make an Italian flavored hummus. I substituted pine nuts for the tahini. Also I used standard Italian seasonings like oregano, thyme, and garlic. The hot crushed peppers were added so that I could keep the salt level down in the hummus. Here is what I did.

Hummus - Italian Flavored
Makes 4 servings

Ingredients:

1 ½ cup cooked garbanzo beans, preferably warm
½ cup bean cooking liquid, this is approximate
¼ cup pine nuts
¼ teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon oregano, dried
¼ teaspoon thyme, dried
2 teaspoons hot crushed peppers
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced

Directions:

Add the warm chickpeas to the food processor and puree until smooth. You will probably need to add some water. I add a little of the bean cooking liquid a few tablespoons at a time until I like the consistency of the humus. Now add the seasonings and puree to combine.

Refrigerate in a closed container until needed.

Nutritional Information (for ¼ of the hummus only):

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 159.82
Calories From Fat (39%) - 61.89

Total Fat - 7.39g
Saturated Fat - 0.58g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 91mg
Potassium - 236.93mg
Total Carbohydrates - 18.42g
Fiber - 5.11g
Sugar - 3.3g
Protein - 6.69g

I had my hummus today with one red bell pepper cut into strips and 2 large carrots cut into spears. After reading the abstract about the impact of food on breast cancer risk I decided to have more vegetables with my hummus than I would normally consume. I have also included the nutrition information with vegetables so that you can see the impact.

Nutritional Information (for ¼ of the hummus with 1 bell pepper and 2 carrots):

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 271.13
Calories From Fat (25%) - 69.05

Total Fat - 8.22g
Saturated Fat - 0.68g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 208.41mg
Potassium - 1060.75mg
Total Carbohydrates - 42.67g
Fiber - 12.68g
Sugar - 17.06g
Protein - 9.63g

Comments:

I recommend warm chickpeas since I find they seem to be easier to puree resulting in a creamier hummus. This is something that I discovered by accident but it seems to work so please give it a try.

Using pine nuts in place of tahini makes a significant difference in the final flavor of the hummus. If you are one of those people that don’t like tahini (yes DT this was a test for you) then I think this version is something you may prefer.

Next time I will probably add a few sun-dried tomatoes and olives to this for more Italian flavor. A few capers or fresh Italian parsley would also be a nice touch. In the end this recipe tastes more Italian and less like hummus than I expected.

When I had my hummus today with one bell pepper and two carrots cut into strips. I input that into the cookbook program and recalculated the numbers. The vitamin A is so high it doesn’t seem correct at over 30,000IU. Folate was also almost double once I added veggies. By including the red bell pepper my hummus snack now has over 195mg of vitamin C. I found it fascinating how adding a big serving of veggies increased the nutrition exponentially. This helps me to begin to understand how eating mostly fruit and vegetables could be linked to a reduction in breast cancer.