Do you have recipes that you love and make over and over again? Do you ever stop making them and forget about them for five or six years? I do that a lot.

I have something I adore, so I make it a lot. Then I get sick of it and stop making it. I eventually forget about the recipe only to remember it when I wake up in the middle of the night to pee and can’t fall back asleep or when John asks me why we haven’t had something in a long time.

This recipe falls into the John keeps asking about it category. Every few weeks he says “do you remember that hummus you used to make?” or “whatever happened to that hummus?” When I buy hummus he says “Do you remember when you used to make hummus?” He doesn’t specify the hummus. I know the one he is talking about. He wants the sun-dried tomato and basil hummus.

He isn’t the only one that loves the hummus. I love this hummus too. I didn’t even get sick of making it. I stopped making it because we ran out of tahini. I hate stirring the oil into tahini. It is gloopy and messy and never turns out right. So I just stopped making hummus because I couldn’t face a new jar or tahini.

A few weeks ago I was reading the internet (I don’t remember which site I was reading, so I can’t site a source, my apologies) and I came across the suggestion to use your mixer to stir the oil into natural peanut butter. I figured if it works for peanut butter it would probably work for tahini. I decided to give it a shot, and it did not disappoint. I spent the evening shoveling hummus into my mouth while texting everyone I know that makes humus to tell them about this trick.

I just poured my new jar of tahini into my mixer. OK, fine, if you want to get technical, poured is a lie. It is gloopy and icky and it was more of a two spatula scrape job. One spatula for the jar and one to clean the spatula (do you call them spatulas or rubber scrapers? I call them spatulas). I turned on my mixer with the paddle attachment and 20 seconds later my tahini was perfectly mixed. Once it was mixed together I could actually pour it (So smooth! No lumps! Not gloopy!) back into the jar. It was well worth washing my mixer bowl and paddle attachment. I am kicking myself for not doing this until now, as it seems sort of obvious. Maybe this is something everyone else has been doing all along and no one has told me? If that is the case, what else aren’t you guys telling me?

Before and after:

Tahini issues solved I grabbed my ingredients and trusty kitchen helper and got to work. Hummus is really easy to make if you have a food processor.

First I put about 6 sun-dried tomatoes and a couple of garlic cloves in the food processor in pulsed. Then I added a can of drained and rinsed garbanzo beans. I turned on the food processor until they were mostly mixed. Next, I threw in about a tablespoon of cumin, a squirt of basil (I forgot to buy basil so I used prepared basil – normally I would go with a handful of basil), and a couple of tablespoons of tahini and whirred it for a few more seconds. At that point I remembered that I should add some olive oil and lemon juice, so I added 2-3 T of olive oil and about a 1 T of lemon juice. I whirred it around a few times until it looked like hummus and called it good.

Audrey and Elliot were my official taste testers. They both loved it on the spoon, but refused to eat it on their plates. Toddlers are jerks. It’s OK though, John and I will happily eat it up.

Do you have any kitchen tips or great recipes to share? Please let me know; I’m always looking to try new things in the kitchen.