The trick is in the details that can raise your hummus from simply pureed chickpeas to wow! The most important step, of course, is to pressure cook the beans yourself instead of using canned, then…
… you want them to cool them before adding the other ingredients so each addition will taste fresh. Finishing with fresh herbs, your best olive oil and a sprinkling of paprika will make you want to make a meal of it.
I served this with lightly warmed Piadine, an Italian flatbread, but warmed pitas would be the best accompaniment. Flour tortillas or bread crostini are great substitutions. The video shows this dish with veggie sticks – it’s fantastic this way, too!
| Pressure Cooker | Accessories | Pr. Cook Time | Pr. Level | Open |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5L or larger | none | 15 -18min. | High (2) | Natural |
(per serving)
- Serves: 6-8
- Serving size: ⅛th
- Calories: 109.1
- TOTAL Fat: 3.8g
- Sugar Carbs: 0.2g
- Sodium: 332.9mg
- Fiber Carbs: 3.3g
- Protein: 4.1g
- Cholesterol: 0.0mg
- 1 cup (180g) dry chickpeas, soaked or quick-soaked
- 4 cups (1L) water
- 1 bay leaf, crumbled
- 1 garlic clove
- 2 heaping tablespoons tahini
- 1 lemon, juiced (about 3 tablespoons of juice)
- ¼ teaspoon powdered cumin
- ½ teaspoon sea salt, or to taste
- 1 sprig parsley, finely chopped
- 1 pinch paprika
- extra virgin olive oil
- Rinse the chickpeas and put them in your pressure cooker and cover with water and add the bay leaf.
- Close and lock the lid of the pressure cooker.
- For electric pressure cookers: Cook for 18 minutes at high pressure.
For stove top pressure cookers: Turn the heat up to high and when the cooker indicates it has reached high pressure, lower to the heat to maintain it and begin counting 15 minutes pressure cooking time. - When time is up, open the pressure cooker with the natural release method - move the pressure cooker to a cool burner and wait for the pressure to come down on its own (about 10 minutes).
- Drain the chickpeas, reserving all of the cooking liquid - you will need some of this to add back when pureeing the chickpeas and you can use the rest in place of stock for your next risotto. Optionally pull out some whole chickpeas to reserve for the garnish.
- Leave the chickpeas to cool (about 30 minutes), and fish out the Bay Leaf.
- Pour chickpeas into the food processor, or puree with a stick blender or potato masher.
- Adding back ½ a cup of cooking liquid along with Tahini, lemon juice, cumin and fresh garlic cloves (depending on your preference).
- Puree to mix and see if the consistency is creamy enough.
- Slowly added additional liquid to reach a creamy consistency - I usually add about a cup back to be just one step out of "pasty" going towards "creamy" but without going "runny."
- When the hummus has reached the right consistency, add salt to taste and puree again to mix well.
- Place either in individual serving dishes or communal dipping bowl.
- Make a nice deep round groove in the middle with a spatula and pour a generous helping of your best olive oil.
- Sprinkle with paprika and fresh parsley, and a few whole cooked chickpeas (if using) and serve.
This recipe has been updated June 2018 with some minor tweaks, if you’d prefer the original recipe published in June 2011 you can see it on the Web Archive.
Does anyone know if the cooking water from plain pressure-cooked chickpeas can work for aquafaba?
Yes, absolutely!! I do it ALL the time. 1 cup DRY (unsoaked) rinsed chickpeas to 4 cups of water. Manual for 45 minutes and NPR. The beans are perfect texture for hummus and the aquafaba is great. I let the beans cool down in the liquid before separating.
I needed to do an extra 5 mins in my instant pot as 18 mins wasnt quite enough. substituted peanut butter for tahini too
Hello and thank you for posting this recipe ! I am very new to pressure cooking and I am loving my Bluetooth instant pot! When I try to download the script for this hummus recipe, it only downloads the script without the recipe and pictures . All of my other script downloads have brought in the recipe, pictures, and the script. Any help for me?
Some of these scripts are in the older format (Instant Pot started with recipe scripts without images) – thanks for letting me know I thought I’d caught them all! I’ll add this to the list to update, next.
Ciao,
L
OK, the the new style of smartscript (with images and directions) has been added for the hummus!
Ciao,
L
I don’t see how the cooking time could be the same for dry or soaked beans.
The recipe asks you to measure dried chickpeas, and then soak them. The cooking times given are for soaked (technically, it’s a little longer to get it creamy).
Ciao,
L
Lovely hummus! Thank you so much for this recipe.
This was good, but a little bland. I added more salt, another tsp of cumin, some olive oil & red pepper flakes. I thought the 1/4 tsp of cumin was a misprint. Most recipes call for 1-2 tsps of cumin regardless of the recipe. I do think soaking the dried beans, then cooking them until soft is far superior to canned. And the pressure cooking technique was incredibly easy & accurate. I’ve been experimenting with my pressure cooker & it’s a huge time saver & a lot of fun.
Yes it’s a great starting point though.
I add extra tahini (3-4 american tbs) and lemon juice (usually 2 lemons, but I taste as I go and it may end up being more). And I usually blend in some smoked paprika as well as sprinkling it on top. I am not sure how much cumin I add. I use half a teaspoon of cumin seeds, which I then roast and grind before tossing them in.
Hello Laura,
I think I read in one of your replies to comments in another recipe (sorry can’t remember which, maybe the tomato sauce or ketchup one) that garlic doesn’t do great under pressure and it would be better to add after the pressure cooking. Anything different about this recipe, for nutritional and flavor shall I just add it raw or best cook it? I’m giving it a try raw right now but I’m curious about your view on this. Thanks in advance!
Hi Caroline, you are right I now recommend adding garlic at the end – this is one of my earlier recipes that I wrote before I realized how much better it is to use just garlic powder under pressure and fresh garlic after pressure cooking. If you want to get the most out of the garlic in this recipe, add the cloves in the blender with the strained chickpeas.
Ciao,
L
G’day Laura,
When I do something with the pressure cooker I always head to your website, before I begin. After enjoying your hummus and some leftover tortillas, both my wife and I are glad that I did. Delicious! Easy!
Normally I soak my chickpeas overnight, but today we just though about hummus after we had a big lunch so there wasn’t time to. Used your quick soak method and it worked perfectly. Followed the rest of the recipe and we had a light supper of hummus and tortilla. Plus we have some left over for later in the week. Thank you so much.
Thanks for this recipe, “Laura, my Italian lady”, for all things pressure cooker.
Pressure Cooking School is super and you write recipes clearly and completely. You write recipes so well that I can safely play with them. That explains the spicy arugula hummus I made last month. Yum.
Yesterday my husband and I played tag-team to make hummus. Our 20 year old immersion blender died. Our first spice choices were a bit off. … Things were not going well. We went to bed. … This morning I remembered the water I saved from pressure cooking the garbanzos. My husband has made hummus before but never used the bean water. I told him, “My Italian lady, Laura, says to add it.”
I pulled out the blender, yesterday’s “hummus paste”, reserved garbanzos, lemon juice, and the precious bean water. It took some back and forth but I finally had a luscious creamy hummus. I topped with beans and oil.
No one in the garden club had ever made hummus but they all loved it.
(Added paprika and parsley to shopping list.)