Stir-Friday! Perfect Homemade Hummus (Sabra clone)

Mmmm… hummus

It’s that time again.  It’s Stir-Friday! For the complete list of this series click here.  The main idea is that making delicious food makes me happy, so I like to share good recipes with you.

OK guys, I don’t normally throw around the word `perfect’ when it comes to recipes, so you know this recipe is super-legit.  As always, I list the starting point of my recipes at the end of the article, but this recipe comes from the Bible of cookbooks… The Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook.  Literally every recipe I’ve tried from this cookbook has turned out well, so I just wanted to let you know the starting point up front.

My favorite brand of store-bought hummus is Sabra (whose isn’t?), so I was basically looking to create a clone recipe for their classic hummus.  The Cook’s Illustrated recipe was a great starting point, but it used 6 tbsp (!) of tahini.  Tahini is not cheap, so I wanted to cut this back a bit.  Also, the flavor of the CI recipe, while awesome, wasn’t quite what I wanted. As a side note, I’m going to be making homemade tahini soon… I’ll let you know how it goes.

So, long story short, I’ve made about 13 batches of hummus in the last four weeks trying to get the recipe just right.  Below are the fruits of my labor:

Stir-Friday! Slow-Cooker Pulled Pork

Awww, yeah. I love pulled pork.

It’s that time again.  It’s Stir-Friday! For an intro to this series see the first post.  Today’s recipe is a gem.  Pulled pork is definitely a comfort food, and this recipe is super easy.  Also, it’s pretty cheap to make if you happen to catch pork shoulder or boston butt on sale, which I did ($0.98/lb?  Yes, and please).  Sweet!  As the title suggests, you will need a slow-cooker (you might call it a crock-pot) to cook this recipe.  Luckily if you don’t have one, you can get a brand new one for about $30 (or score a used one off craigslist for super cheap), and then you can make all sorts of stuff with it.  Anyway, on to the pulled pork.