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See why.Supermarket Hummus
This creamy chickpea spread has gone from health food obscurity to the No. 1 refrigerated dip. But some brands definitely aren't worth a swipe.
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With just five ingredients—chickpeas, tahini, garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice—plus a smattering of spices, hummus couldn’t be easier to make at home. But that doesn’t mean we can resist the convenience of the store-bought stuff, especially now that it’s sold everywhere. Fifteen years ago, a handful of companies shared the $5 million U.S. market for hummus. Today hummus dominates the category known as refrigerated spreads, which raked in more than $430 million in retail sales last year. Brands can be found coast to coast, even at the 7-Eleven—a trend no doubt fueled by the fact that hummus is something you can feel good about eating. It’s a protein-rich food far lower in fat than the typical cream-based dip.
As for supermarket shelves, they are jammed with an ever-expanding menu of “hummus and” riffs: sun-dried tomatoes, jalapeños and cilantro, roasted garlic and chives—there’s even guacamole hummus. Flavor options aside, the explosion in brands alone makes it harder to know which one to buy. The ideal spread is appealingly smooth and creamy, with the fresh, clean flavor of buttery chickpeas in balance with the earthy toasted-sesame taste of tahini, set off by a lemon-garlic bite. But some store-bought hummus doesn’t even come close, with funky off-flavors and stodgy, grainy consistency.
To find the best supermarket version, we rounded up eight nationally available samples of plain hummus (no flavor variations). Along with the usual refrigerated concoctions in party-size plastic tubs, we found a shelf-stable hummus that uses no oil, a soy-chickpea-blend hummus, and a box mix that has you stirring in hot water and olive oil. We included them all, setting them before 21 staff members who sampled them with warm pita in two blind tastings. Our findings confirmed that many spreads simply aren’t worth buying—in fact, five of the eight products we tasted didn’t earn our recommendation at all. But the good news is that a few hit the mark with nutty, earthy flavor and a wonderfully thick, creamy texture.
ANCIENT ORIGINS
All hummus starts with the chickpea, the creamy yellow seed of a legume pod first cultivated thousands of years ago. The ancient Romans bought roasted chickpeas from street stalls. One of the earliest recipes for hummus bi tahina (chickpeas with tahini) appeared in a 13th-century Egyptian cookbook. Today chickpeas are the most consumed legume in the world, and hummus is a staple in the Middle East, where hummus shops are as common as pizza parlors in this country. Heated debate can erupt over whose hummus is best, and exact recipes are carefully guarded secrets.
As we scooped our way through the hummus brands in our ...
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This “hearty but not dense” hummus had a “very clean flavor of tahini” that was also “earthy,” and had tasters praising it as “tahini heaven.” Its richness made it taste “like good homemade: real, buttery, almost sweet.” One taster confessed, “I’d eat this with a spoon.”
This less tahini-forward, “lemony” hummus had a “super-soft and silky,” “smooth” texture. With its high degree of moisture, it struck some tasters as “watered down” and “lacking substance.” But most found it “good all around.” “Now this is a hummus I can get with,” one taster raved.
“Creamy,” with a “thick and smooth,” “very likable texture,” this “clean-tasting” hummus had “deep savory notes.” A few tasters acknowledged its “strong tahini flavor,” which was “almost like peanut butter.” For some, it was overload: “Not to be Goldi-hummus, but this has too much tahini.”
Not Recommended
“Tastes like taco night,” and not in a good way, with “too much cumin.” Tasters also complained that it was “too tangy.” Its “creamy” texture was undermined by “random grains of chunky chickpeas.” For others it was “a touch bitter.”
With the highest amount of water and the lowest amount of protein and fat among the products in our lineup, this shelf-stable hummus was “like mustard,” with a “runny” texture “reminiscent of baby food.” Some tasters found its “citrusy,” “garlicky” flavors “almost abrasive.”
Reconstituted from chickpea flour and dried tahini and seasonings, this box mix hummus failed mainly on the basis of its “dry” and “sandy” texture. It was also “bland” and “stale,” with “lots of raw spice in there,” and most of us “could barely taste any tahini.”
If this was hummus, some tasters didn’t believe it. With “very little chickpea except in the finish,” it “tastes like sandwich spread” or “like an Italian seasoning packet.” Several tasters found it “sour,” and a few faulted it for being “quite salty.”
With a “very creamy,” “mousselike” texture, this soybean-chickpea hummus had “maple-like undertones.” No wonder: It was the only product in our lineup that lists sugar in its ingredients. Though it was high in protein, the soybeans made this hybrid hummus taste strange; some tasters speculated that it was “fermented.”
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