Sun-Dried Tomato Hummus

This sun-dried tomato hummus takes just minutes to make, with only a few ingredients, and it tastes so much better than shop-bought hummus!

You could never call me a food snob - I'm just as happy with a frozen pizza as I am with something fancy (though I do insist on the pizza actually being cooked first, so I suppose I'm a snob about that).

But when it comes to hummus, I only like homemade. I don't know what it is - homemade hummus is just so much better than the shop-bought stuff, especially when it's extra tasty like this sun-dried tomato hummus!

Homemade hummus

I never used to like hummus very much - I'm not sure why, I'm just not really a fan of the stuff you can buy in the shops. Worst vegetarian ever, I know.

But then I discovered homemade hummus, which is an entirely different story. I don't know what makes it so different, but it's delicious. It's thick, it's creamy, it's silky, and you can make it exactly to your own taste.

This sun-dried tomato hummus is right up my street - it has a beautiful, rich sweetness, with plenty of garlic, and it's topped with toasted pine nuts. So, so good.

How to make hummus

Homemade hummus is so easy to make. It only needs a few ingredients:

• chickpeas - I always use tinned chickpeas for convenience
• tahini (sesame seed paste)
• garlic
• extra virgin olive oil
• and whatever extras you want to include (I added sun-dried tomatoes!)

You literally just need to chuck everything in a food processor, and blitz it up until it's nice and smooth. I like to add a splash of water too, as it helps to thin it out a little, and makes it extra creamy.

Hummus toppings

If you enjoy making your food look as good as it tastes, a few toppings go a long way to making a beautiful dish!

I always serve hummus with a good drizzle of olive oil on top - this time I used some of the oil from the jar of sun-dried tomatoes, which worked so well! There's so much flavour in that beautiful oil, so I didn't want to waste it.

I also scattered some toasted pine nuts over my sun-dried tomato hummus - they look pretty, and they taste amazing.

Toasted pine nuts

If you've never toasted pine nuts before - please, please do it. Please. Just do it now. They're so amazing.

Somehow, a frying pan can transform pine nuts from 'fine, but nothing special' to 'oh my' in about 5 minutes. They get beautifully toasty and nutty (as you might expect from toasted nuts).

If it wasn't for the fact that nuts in general are pretty expensive, I would happily eat toasted pine nuts by the fistful.

Scatter them across your sun-dried tomato hummus, and you've got an incredible snack, lunch, or appetiser.

How to serve hummus

We usually have hummus as part of a snacky lunch, alongside all sorts of other tasty nibbles - cucumber, tomatoes, crackers or pitta bread, cheese, coleslaw... it's probably the most common lunch in our household (and it helps that my daughters will both eat it all!).

A few other ideas for how to serve hummus:

• pack it up in your lunchbox
• serve it as an appetiser for a dinner party (don't forget the toppings to make it look fancy!)
• spread it on toast or crackers
• use it as a pasta sauce
• dollop it into soup

(or just eat it with a spoon straight out of the tub)

How do you usually serve your hummus?

However you serve it, this sun-dried tomato hummus will definitely be your new favourite.