How to make hummus for around a dollar

You can make your own hummus at a low cost and it can become greater quality too. There are two versions. One is a bit more instant. The other will be even cheaper but require some more planning and preparation in a time efficient way.

Comparing our way to the store-bought versions

There are good reasons to make your own hummus instead of buying it from the store. The best deal, at the supermarket, will usually be $8 per kilo for hummus. I think we can do better than that. It also comes in a plastic tub. So a homemade version will reduce wasteful plastic. Many supermarket dips also have preservatives too. You might find locally made fresh products without artificial additives. But you’re still usually facing the plastic and the cost. Make your own! I personally prefer to store my hummus in a glass reused jar. It’s a fully zero-waste container that can fit in the fridge. But you came here to find out about cost-effective preparation of this fun food. Here we go.

Homemade hummus. Image: MSW

Organic or extra cheap?

I personally would choose the organic version of everything if I could. I want an abundance of organics. In reality, the world is facing a significant cost of living. Sometimes the extra frugal way will get a household through these times. I will look at both options.

A normal hummus will usually contain:

Chickpeas - 25 cents or up to $2.09

Garlic - around 10 cents

Tahini - 20 cents

Lemon - 25 cents or $1.7

Extra virgin olive oil - 18 cents

A topping of paprika if desired and pinch of salt - potential 15 cents

Cheaper chickpeas

I looked at Woolworths to see how accessible this can be. The basic tinned option is the ‘home brand’ can for 80 cents. Woolies also sells 1kg of McKenzie dry chickpeas for $3. A can of legumes will usually have about 250 grams of actual solid food in it. These little things are going to double or triple in size when soaked and then cooked. If you’re doing that method, you probably want to make a big batch. Freeze the rest for other recipes. I’m going to assume the pulses will expand to 2.5 their original size when cooked. Ok? So you would need 100 grams of dried chickpeas. So you’re looking at potentially 30 cents worth of chickpeas for this hummus. That’s all.

It gets even cheaper if you have a membership with Amazon Prime (and are justifying the cost of that subscription in various ways). There’s the bag of Pattu Kabuli Chick Peas, 5 kg for $12.25. This brings the portion for this recipe down to 24.5 cents. I recently got a few of the 2 kg bag at $5.50 a pack. Do what feels right.

If you want an organic low-cost option, let’s crunch the numbers on that too. There’s a can of organic chickpeas for $2.09. Honest to Goodness has a 5kg bag of organic dry chickpeas for $52. That still works out to be $1.04 for this recipe’s required portion. That’s not too much more expensive than the can of home brand legumes. Worth considering. That is a huge bulk bag. The compromise (and more zero-waste option) would be $1.35 worth of chickpeas from The Source Bulk Foods. You can get just the amount you need and it’s cheaper than a can of this organic food.

Bargain Garlic

I will keep this short and sweet. You probably know where to find garlic near you. But for the sake of showing the cost of making hummus, I’ll quickly flick through this. A head of garlic is $1.25 at Woolies. Shopping at Doorstep Organics, Italian garlic is currently $79.50 per kilo as I write this. I looked on Facebook Marketplace because we’re really different over here. There are bulbs of garlic for $1.50 at a place called “Bobs Farm.” Someone is selling Russian garlic for $20 per kilo at the Central Coast. The internet hints at an average weight of around 5 grams for a clove of garlic. Food experts, does that sound right? So a good deal could lead to the garlic costing just 10 cents for a clove. Let’s go with that.

Tahini

The cost of tahini is pretty straight forward. There’s a $5 jar of organic tahini at Woolies. It’s so much cheaper than other brands, and organic as mentioned, so I’m sticking with that. You might end up using around 20 cents of tahini.

Lemon

Let’s quickly do this. You can get a kilo of organic lemons for $14.95 on special at Doorstep Organics. A single lemon costs $1.03 at Woolworths. Or you can get a half kilo odd bunch for $2.50. I prefer to avoid the plastic so that’s not my top pick. I switched to Facebook Marketplace and saw a seller in Newcastle who advertises single lemons for $1 or $5 per kilo. It should be relatively natural, if it’s from someone’s yard. You could be lucky and find someone who is giving away lemons. It happens. Getting a kilo deal, you could be looking at 28-55 cents for a single lemon. But see what you can find.

Olive oil

For extra virgin olive oil, I started at the supermarket web site again. The best deal was $32 for 4 litres. But there’s a Bertolli Organic Fruity Taste Extra Virgin Olive Oil at $36 for 3 litres. Elsewhere online, there’s a Spiral Foods 500 ml for $17.95. It depends on how much you want to get at once. You really should just drizzle a bit of oil on top if at all. Many people make hummus oil-free. I’m just putting the lowest cost into the above list because it’s not too crucial.

Paprika

Finally, I like a bit of paprika on my hummus. It’s yum! Good old Maharajah’s Choice. I love how that brand is really really cheap. The 1 kg bag is on Amazon for $12.58. I’m guessing you would use about 5 cents worth of this flavouring. Doorstep Organics has a Planet Organic glass jar of organic paprika for $6.95. There are little packs of Gourmet Organic brand sweet paprika at $4.65 for 30 grams. The required quantity might be around 62 cents or half of that with the packet of organic stuff. The Source Bulk Foods sells paprika at $2.60 for 100 grams. You might use 10 cents worth of that stuff. I’m going to say, realistically, the cost of seasoning is 5-10 cents. Ok.

Salt

Here’s the crazy way before the almost normal way. I saw a video in which someone got water from the ocean and then evaporated it on the stove until just the salt was left. Let’s acknowledge that I have not tried this. I would pick the Australian pink lake salt from The Source Bulk Foods. You probably already have salt. Or know someone who can spare a bit of salt. We’re not going to add this into the above list.

The time investment

It really doesn’t take much time to make hummus. If you use canned chickpeas, simply chuck everything into a food processor or Thermomix. If you use dried chickpeas, rinse them before soaking overnight. You don’t have to do much. Let them sit there. Rinse them again before boiling this food in a pot or pressure cooker. Again, they sit and boil as you do something else. So it officially takes a day or two but you’re not dedicating that much time. But after that prep, it’s a minute of blending. That simple.

The final result

If you get the bulk options of these foods, a batch of hummus is estimated to cost as little as $1.13. It assumes that you stock up on kilos and litres of the ingredients that will last a while in the kitchen. But it works out better in the long term. This spend is significantly less than the $8 for a less natural version in a plastic tub at a store. You could set aside just a few minutes in the day to create a delicious food that’s a dip, spread and sauce.

I shared my homemade hummus earlier. Here is another hummus, image from Unsplash.

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