So, you’ve been following along with me while I have canned a whole load of different beans. Great! Now you have about 16 pint jars of beans! What do you do with them now?!?

Well, apart from the amazingly awesome vegan bean burgers, how about hummus! No, this isn’t your tired old blah store bought hummus. This is a culinary superhero, packed with vitamins, protein, fibre, and most importantly – FLAVOUR. If you eat hummus with a grain it also forms complete protein – so make your favourite bread and scoop it.

2 pint jars of home canned chickpeas
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
5 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4 cup water
1/3 cup tahini
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for serving

Place the chickpeas, garlic, and kosher salt in the bowl of a food processor. Process for 15 to 20 seconds. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and process for another 15 to 20 seconds. Add the lemon juice and water then process for another 20 seconds. Add the tahini, buzz it hard, then scrape down the sides of the bowl. With the processor running, drizzle in the olive oil.

SUBSTITUTIONS
If you don’t have tahini you can use peanut butter instead – you may lose out on one of the essential amino acids, but it’ll still taste great and be really good for you.
If you have gluten problems, you can use corn tortillas or other substitutes for bread. I prefer to use raw carrots or other veggies instead of bread.

ALTERNATE VERSIONS
If you don’t have, or don’t like chickpeas, you can use any other legume – our local has an amazing black eyed pea hummus.
Add in a 1/2 inch / 1.25cm length of raw horseradish to make it fiery. You could also add a chili pepper or some raw ginger.

COST BREAKDOWN
A one pound packet of dried chickpeas produces 4 pint jars. Add in the costs of production, let’s call it 29cents per jar.
Tahini at my local store was $3.99 a jar. Using 1/3 cup per batch, that’s 73cents per batch.
I always have big bottles of lemon juice to hand – while it’s worth it to use freshly squeezed if you can, that’s not always practical, so I’ll use the cost of the bottled stuff. Call it 2cents. The rest of the ingredients add another couple of cents to the cost, so let’s call the lemon juice and seasonings 5cents.
So, two pints of home made hummus for about $1.07. One pint gets eaten, the other gets frozen for later consumption. I call that a win.

Original recipe courtesy Alton Brown. He’s an amazing guy.