Skip to main content
Main

Sesame Chickpea Dip

A chickpea and tahini dip flavored with garlic, lemon, and olive oil.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chickpea and sesame share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 78 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

Timeabout 1 hour

Ingredients

Contains: wheat, sesame (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Cook the chickpeas

  1. Soak chickpeas in water with baking soda overnight.

  2. Drain the water, add fresh water to cover the beans by about 1", and cook until well done, about 1 hour.

  3. Drain and cool the beans.

  4. If you want a smoother texture, gently rub the beans together to loosen translucent hulls and discard them.

Make the hummus

  1. Transfer the beans to a bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade, add garlic and salt, and pulse several times to mash, then puree, scraping down the sides several times.

  2. Stir olive oil thoroughly to combine.

  3. Pour the mixture into a small bowl, add cold water, and stir thoroughly; the mixture will thicken.

  4. Add lemon juice and stir into a smooth sauce.

  5. Transfer the mixture to the food processor, pulse several times to combine with the chickpea puree, scrape down the sides, then mix thoroughly.

  6. Add olive oil and more tahini to taste, and adjust seasonings with more salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a large shallow dish, smooth the surface, and make several dents in the mixture.

  2. Spoon olive oil into the dents, and drizzle the surface with more olive oil if desired.

  3. Garnish with chopped parsley and pomegranate seeds if desired.

  4. Serve with pita bread or veggies; also a good addition to a falafel or lamb sandwich in pita bread.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Chickpea + sesametop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together78 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Chickpea + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Tahini + sesametop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Garlic + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together23,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chickpeas
Form the bulk of the dip, giving it body and a creamy, mashed texture when pureed.
Tahini
Adds richness and a nutty, sesame flavor while helping the puree become smooth and creamy.
Lemons
Provide acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the tahini and oil.
Extra virgin olive oil
Adds fat for smoothness and a rounded, fruity flavor, and pools in the dents as a finish.
Garlic
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma and flavor that mellows during processing.
Baking soda
Raises the soaking water's alkalinity, softening the chickpeas so they cook and puree more easily.

The step that matters

Cook the chickpeas until well done. Chickpeas that are not fully softened stay grainy and will not purée smooth, so the hummus turns out gritty. Soaking with baking soda and cooking until very tender gives a creamy base.

Flavor stand-ins for the tahini

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chickpea, beans, garlic, sesame, lemon, olive, pepper):

  1. Peanutbetter flavor fit
  2. Lentilsbetter flavor fit
  3. Mung beanbetter flavor fit
  4. Tahinithe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chickpea, beans, garlic, sesame, lemon, olive, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More hummus recipes

with Tahini 3 See all 29 →

You might also like

Illustration of Lemon SauceIllustrationLemon Sauce236 recipesIllustration of German Style String BeansIllustrationGerman Style String Beans7 recipesIllustration of Tomato SoupIllustrationTomato Soup526 recipesIllustration of Brown BreadIllustrationBrown Bread461 recipes