Easy Roast Beetroot Hummus Recipe and Tips to Roasting Fresh Beets

This roasted beetroot hummus recipe make a deliciously healthy dip made with roasted fresh beetroots, chickpeas, tahini, lemon, garlic, and extra virgin olive oil. Roasted beetroots are more nutritious than canned beetroots and taste naturally sweeter and more flavoursome. Roasting beetroots is super easy – set and forget – then it’s a quick and easy dip to make in a blender or food processor.

Our easy roast beetroot hummus recipe makes a delicious dip of roast beetroot, chickpeas and tahini and it’s not only one of our best beetroot recipes, it’s one of our best hummus recipes. If you’re a lover of hummus and enjoyed our authentic hummus recipe for a traditional hummus, or our pumpkin hummus recipe and carrot hummus recipe then you’re going to love this beet hummus recipe.

You can serve this roast beetroot hummus as a mezze, a starter or side to Arabic dishes such as hummus, baba ganoush (roast eggplant dip), fatoush (village salad with crunchy pita chips), tabbouleh (parsley-heavy salad), or beef kofta (spicy ground meat kebabs). You’ll find all of those filed in this collection of our best Middle Eastern recipes.

Or you could snack on this roasted beet hummus with crunchy vegetable crudités, homemade crispy pita chips or sourdough crackers just as you would any dip – and if you’ve landed here looking for dips made from scratch, we have plenty more recipes for homemade dips.

This easy roast beetroot hummus recipe comes together quickly after roasting the beetroots and please don’t let that deter you. Roasting beets is a breeze. The recipe calls for one beetroot, however, you can put a few beets in the oven and make our roast beet salad with feta, rucola and pistachios on cumin-spiced carrot hummus.

Before I tell you more about this beetroot hummus recipe, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-supported. If you’ve cooked our recipes and enjoyed them, please consider supporting Grantourismo. You could buy a handcrafted KROK, the best mortar and pestle ever, buy something from our Grantourismo store such as gifts for food lovers designed with Terence’s images, or buy something on Amazon, such as these cookbooks for culinary travellers or classic cookbooks for serious cooks.

Now let me tell you all about this beetroot hummus recipe and share a few tips to roasting beetroots, which is really very easy.

Beetroot Hummus Recipe and Tips to Roasting Fresh Beetroots

In Arabic, hummus is more correctly hummus bi-tahina, as ‘hummus’ translates to ‘chickpeas’ and ‘tahina’ is obviously ‘tahini’, so hummus is basically a chickpea and tahini dip. Yet you’ll find all kinds of hummus dips in the Middle East, from a classic hummus bi-zayt (chickpeas with olive oil) to the heavenly hummus wa rummaan (chickpeas and pomegranate).

Aside from the oven-roasted beets, this roasted beetroot hummus recipe is comprised of the ingredients that make an authentic Middle Eastern hummus – chickpeas, tahini, lemon, garlic, and extra virgin olive oil – but is it really a hummus?

We spent almost a decade living in and travelling the Middle East from our home in Abu Dhabi and then Dubai, where we cooked and ate the many variations of Arabic food from right across the region a few times a week: Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian, Egyptian, you name it.

While there are countless iterations of hummus around the region, the basis for all of the many forms of hummus was a traditional hummus of the kind that our authentic hummus recipe on the link above makes.

During our decade eating our way around the Middle East, we never spotted a beetroot ‘hummus’ or ‘carrot hummus’, which is why, after we discovered these crazy coloured dips at the Turkish food shops at Vienna’s Naschmarkt – everything from a green wasabi ‘hummus’ to a yellow curry ‘hummus’ – we resisted calling them ‘hummus’.

Times change, however, and after leaving the UAE, I started spotting similar vegetable-driven hummus dips on the recipe sites of food bloggers from Beirut to Dubai and friends in the Middle East reported that they could now be bought from supermarkets and delis, where you find stainless steel tubs of hummus, baba ganouj, muttabal, labneh balls, olives, pickles, kebbe, and so on.

So now that I can write about this roasted beetroot hummus recipe guilt-free, knowing I’ve not committed any crimes against some of our favourite cuisines, let me share a few quick tips to making this easy roast beet hummus recipe.

Tips to Make this Easy Beetroot Hummus Recipe

As with a traditional hummus recipe, one of the things that make this easy beetroot hummus recipe such a breeze is that it can easily be made with a can of chickpeas. You simply drain the chickpeas (keeping the liquid aside in case you need some) and throw the chickpeas in a blender or food processor with the roast beetroot and other ingredients.

Of course, you could use dried chickpeas instead of canned chickpeas if you prefer, so let me just share a few tips to using dried chickpeas in hummus, courtesy of Terence, who was taught to make hummus by a Lebanese work colleague when we lived in Abu Dhabi.

Tips to Using Dried Chickpeas to Make Hummus

Firstly, you’ll need to soak the dried chickpeas overnight the night before you make this beetroot hummus recipe to soften them. In his traditional hummus recipe, Terence suggests half a teaspoon of baking soda to speed up that process, then thoroughly rinsing them in a colander.

Add the chickpeas to a soup pot with enough water to covering the chickpeas by at least a centimetre, bring the water to a boil over high heat then simmer the chickpeas with a lid on the pot for around an hour. Although it’s a good idea to check the chickpeas at around 45-50 minutes, which you can do by squeezing a chickpea between two fingers; if the chickpea is soft then it’s done.

Keep the water the chickpeas were cooked in, as you can add a little of this to the blender or food processor if needed to give an even smoother texture. Another way to get a creamier texture is to peel the semi-transparent skins off the chickpeas if they didn’t come off when they were boiling. Just rub them between two fingers and they’ll come away easily.

If you’re using canned chickpeas, soak them in a bowl of water for a couple of minutes and you’ll see them come away. Drain the chickpeas and a lot of the skins should fall off. Just use your fingers to rub off those that haven’t. It’s a fiddly process, but it will definitely give your hummus a creamier texture if that’s what you’re after.

Tips to Roasting Fresh Beetroots

If you’re using canned chickpeas then you’ll begin with step one of our easy beetroot hummus recipe, below, by first roasting the beetroot, so just a few quick beetroot roasting tips.

Pre-heat your oven to 240°C / 464°F then trim and scrub your beetroots. Our beetroot hummus recipe only calls for one beetroot, however, I usually roast a few beetroots, which we use in salads, such as this Russian beetroot and potato salad or soups, such as this cold beetroot soup, which is cooling on a hot day.

I wrap the scrubbed beetroots very loosely in aluminium foil, twisting the piece of foil together above the top centre of the beetroots, so they’re essentially steaming in there.

I then place the foil-wrapped beetroots on a baking tray on the middle oven rack. I use a rimmed baking tray, just in case any beetroot juice leaks out of the foil, especially if I’m roasting the beetroots alongside other vegetables.

I find the beetroots take 45-50 minutes to roast, but I set a timer and slide the tray out of the oven to check them at 30 minutes, just un-twisting the foil, and taking a quick peek. If they look dry (not wet), I pour a few tablespoons of water over the beetroot, secure the foil again, and slide them back into the oven.

Check the beetroots again at 45 minutes by poking a fork or skewer into them. They’re ready when it slides in easily. Unwrap the beetroots and set them aside. When the beetroots are cool enough to handle, peel the skin off, dice one beetroot, and transfer it to a blender or food processor. (The other beetroots will keep in a sealed container in the fridge for a few days.)

Transfer the drained chickpeas, tahini, minced garlic (or garlic powder), lemon juice, salt, and extra virgin olive oil to a food processor or blender, and pulse, adding a little chickpea liquid if needed, bit by bit, taking care not to add too much so the hummus doesn’t turn out watery.

Try your beetroot hummus and adjust the seasoning to suit your taste, adding more salt, extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, or even more minced garlic or white or black pepper, then blend again to well-combine.

Do try to use fresh lemon juice and the best quality extra virgin olive oil you can afford. I find that the better quality olive oils might be more expensive but they taste significantly more delicious so I use less of them than I would a cheaper product.

Lastly, scoop the beetroot hummus into a bowl, drizzle on a little more extra virgin olive oil, and garnish with black and white sesame seeds and/or roasted nuts, such as pistachios, cashews and/or pine nuts.

Serve your beet hummus with cucumber and carrot batons, fresh pita bread or crisp pita chips – or as a starter or side to other Arabic dishes for a fantastic Middle Eastern feast.

Beetroot Hummus Recipe

Beetroot Hummus Recipe and Tips to Roasting Fresh Beetroots

AuthorLara Dunston

This roasted beetroot hummus recipe make a deliciously healthy dip made with roasted fresh beetroots, chickpeas, tahini, lemon, garlic, and extra virgin olive oil. Roasted beetroots are more nutritious than canned beetroots and taste sweeter and more flavoursome. Roasting beetroots is super easy then it’s a quick and easy dip to make in a blender or food processor.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe Rate this Recipe

Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 50 minutes mins

Course Appetiser, Dip, Side Dish, Snack

Cuisine Middle Eastern

Servings made with recipeServings 1 Bowl

Calories 1294 kcal

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• 1 beetroot - (around 170 g), trimmed, scrubbed
• 1 400 g (15 oz) can chickpeas – drained, keep the liquid
• 2 tbsp tahini
• 3 garlic cloves - minced
• 1 small lemon - juiced
• 1 tsp salt – or to taste
• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Instructions

 

• First roast the beetroot: heat oven to 240°C (464°F); wrap the scrubbed beetroot loosely in foil, place it on a rimmed baking tray (in case it leaks) on the middle oven rack, and roast for 45-50 minutes until you can easily slide a fork into the beetroot.
• At 30 minutes, check the beetroot; if it looks dry (not moist) pour a few tablespoons of water over the beetroot and secure the foil again.
• Unwrap the beetroot; when it’s cool enough to handle, peel the skin off, dice the beetroot, and transfer it to a blender or food processor.
• Add the drained chickpeas, tahini, minced garlic, lemon juice, salt, and extra virgin olive oil and blend; if needed, add some chickpea liquid, little by little, taking care not to add too much so it isn’t watery.
• Taste and adjust the seasoning to suit your palate, adding more salt, extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, or even more minced garlic or white or black pepper, then blend again.
• Transfer the beetroot hummus to a bowl, drizzle on a little more extra virgin olive oil; garnish with sesame seeds and/or roasted nuts, such as pistachios, cashews and/or pine nuts, and serve with cucumber and carrot batons, fresh pita bread or crisp pita chips.

Notes

Garnish: sesame seeds and/or roasted nuts, such as pistachios, cashews and/or pine nuts

Nutrition

Calories: 1294kcalCarbohydrates: 137gProtein: 44gFat: 70gSaturated Fat: 9gPolyunsaturated Fat: 16gMonounsaturated Fat: 40gSodium: 2466mgPotassium: 1759mgFiber: 37gSugar: 28gVitamin A: 180IUVitamin C: 71mgCalcium: 299mgIron: 15mg

Please do let us know in the comments below if you make our roast beetroot hummus recipe as we’d love to hear how it turned out for you.