How to Substitute for Tahini in Hummus

Tahini, a paste made from ground sesame seeds, gives hummus a smooth texture and complex flavor; we use a full ¼ cup of tahini and one 15-ounce can of chickpeas (plus olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, and water) in our Classic Hummus. To see if we could make hummus without tahini, we simply omitted the tahini and proceeded with our recipe; the result tasted too lean and lacked the richness and depth of the original version.

So we looked for a replacement for the tahini, testing various ingredients in its stead. Simply using more olive oil (which has bitter notes similar to those of tahini) made the mixture too loose and wet. Whole-milk togurt added body, but its flavor was too tangy and the result just didn't taste like hummus. The best substitute was peanut butter; it provided ample body and craminess and a toast, nutty depth reminiscent of tahini. But peanut butter's sweetness was a problem—it was easily identifiable as an outlier in the hummus. Cutting the amount back from ¼ cup to 2 tablespoons and making up the difference with extra olive oil solved the problem. Skippy, our winning regular peanut butter, worked here, but our tasters preferred natural peanut butter, which isn't as sweet.

The bottom line: You can use smooth peanut butter cut with olive oil in place of tahini in hummus, but the results won't taste exactly like the genuine article.