Sweet Potato Hummus
This sweet potato hummus recipe is bursting with flavor, both sweet and savory. Enjoy it as a snack with pita wedges and veggies or as a spread!
Updated by Kathryne Taylor on November 21, 2025
Meet one of my favorite snacks, sweet potato hummus! It’s brilliant orange and bursting with flavor, both savory and sweet. I’ve been eating it with everything: pita wedges, bite-sized vegetables, toasted bagels and even quesadillas.
This creamy hummus is a fun everyday snack, and it’s special enough to serve as a holiday appetizer. It’s conveniently vegan and gluten-free (pending your accompaniments), so it’s an excellent app for everyone to enjoy.
How to Make Sweet Potato Hummus
I originally shared this recipe in 2011, and recently improved it with tricks I learned while creating The Best Hummus Recipe. You’ll find the full recipe below in printable format. Here’s why this recipe works so well.
- Roast the sweet potato until it’s tender and creamy throughout. Once it’s cooled, it’s easy to peel off the skin before blending.
- Blend tahini, garlic, lemon zest and juice, salt and cumin in a food processor. Lemon zest brightens the flavor of this dish, and cumin offers a subtle complementary flavor. While blending, you’ll drizzle in some cool water, which works magic on the tahini—it lightens up the color and consistency, allowing it to become super creamy.
- Blend in the chickpeas, then the roasted sweet potato. Process the chickpeas until the mixture is completely smooth. Give them plenty of time to blend (about 2 minutes in my food processor) so your hummus turns out smooth, not chunky. Then, blend in the roasted sweet potato.
- If you’d like your hummus to taste spicy, which is a nice counterbalance to the sweetness of the sweet potato, blend in a pinch or two of cayenne pepper. Garnish with olive oil, a pinch of cayenne pepper, or sesame seeds, if you’d like—or serve it as is.
More Sweet Potato Recipes
Here are a few more of my favorite savory sweet potato recipes to try:
- Black Bean Sweet Potato Enchiladas
- Crispy Baked Sweet Potato Fries
- Perfect Baked Sweet Potato
- Savory Mashed Sweet Potatoes
- Vegetarian Sweet Potato Chili
Please let me know how your hummus turns out in the comments! I love hearing from you. You can check out more hummus recipes here.
Sweet Potato Hummus
This sweet potato hummus is bursting with flavor—it’s savory, a little sweet, and spicy if you wish. Enjoy it as a snack with pita wedges and veggies, or use it as a spread! This recipe yields about 3 cups of hummus (a lot!).
Ingredients
- 1 medium-to-somewhat-large sweet potato (8 to 14 ounces)
- ⅓ cup tahini
- 2 medium cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
- Zest of ½ lemon (about 1 teaspoon)
- ¼ cup lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon fine salt
- ¼ teaspoon ground cumin
- 1 to 3 tablespoons cool water, as needed
- 1 can (15 ounces) chickpeas, rinsed and drained, or 1 ½ cups cooked chickpeas
- Up to ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional, for spice)*
- Optional garnishes: Olive oil, cayenne pepper, or sesame seeds
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake the sweet potato on the middle oven rack or in a baking dish for 45 minutes to 1 hour. It will yield to a gentle squeeze when it’s done baking.
- While the sweet potato is cooling, combine the tahini, garlic, lemon zest and juice, salt and cumin in a food processor. While processing the mixture, drizzle in 1 tablespoon of the water. Blend until the mixture is super creamy, pausing to scrape down the bottom or sides as necessary (you may need to add 1 to 2 more tablespoons of water if your tahini was thick).
- Add the drained chickpeas and process until the mixture is completely smooth, about 2 minutes. Once the sweet potato has cooled enough to handle, use a knife or your fingers to peel off the skin. Discard the skin and add the sweet potato flesh to the food processor.
- Blend until the mixture is completely smooth, about 1 minute. Taste, and blend in a pinch or two of cayenne pepper if you’d like your hummus to taste spicy. Enjoy as is, or garnish it with a drizzle of olive oil, a light sprinkle of cayenne pepper or sesame seeds. This hummus will keep well in the refrigerator for about 1 week.
Notes
Adapted from My New Roots and Whole Family Fare.
*Spice level: The recipe originally was quite spicy, calling for 1 ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper (start with less, season to taste) and ½ teaspoon smoked paprika. My current jar of cayenne is so spicy that I could not tolerate the full amount and found it quite spicy at ¼ teaspoon. I also found that smoked paprika muddied the sweet potato flavor, so I omitted it. If your hummus tastes too spicy at first, just refrigerate it for a day and try it again—it should be just right!
2024 recipe adjustments: After retesting the recipe, I made the spice edits mentioned above, increased the tahini from 3 tablespoons to ⅓ cup for thicker hummus, omitted the olive oil, restructured the blending process and incorporated water, and increased the salt for more overall flavor.
Nutrition
The information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice. See our full nutrition disclosure here.
Excellent!
I’m glad you enjoyed it, Stephanie! I appreciate your review.
Can l freeze this recipe?
Favorite hummus!!! Delicious and always a crowd pleaser.
Do you think subbing white beans for chickpeas would work good flavor wise. I detest chickpeas. Meaning I always have to make fresh hummus without them.
I recommend this best as written. If you try something different, let me know what you think!
Just made this, fantastic!! I cut the cayenne to 1/2 teaspoon ( we are wimps) otherwise I made it exactly as written. Delicious!
I love to hear that, Deb!
My friend and I made this today. It’s amazingly delicious. It is overtaken my number one position of favourite Hummus flavours knocking barbecue and roasted red pepper hummus into second and third place.
Where I live, sweet potatoes come in many sizes. What is the quantity of “2 Medium sweet potatoes” please? I am working through your recipes with delight.
Best hummus!! Simple and delicious. I make it regularly….sometimes with chipoltle, sometimes without. Either way, it gets eaten VERY quickly! Thank you for another amazing recipe.
You’re welcome, Tricia!
Delish, nice alternative hummus flavor profile. Well balanced. I was looking for something sweeter and was unsure about the lemon juice and garlic but they’re just subtle background flavors. Sometimes I also find the tahini to be overpowering in hummus recipes, here it is not.
I added some cinnamon and used Aleppo leftover from some muhamarra as my spice.
I don’t know that I’d dip fruit in this but I think I prefer this flavor profile to the “chocolate” hummus variety.
Would this recipe work without chickpeas? I’m allergic to legumes.
Hi Alli, it won’t be hummus, but I think a sweet potato and lentil dip would be tasty. If you try it, let me know!
Please try to give a substitute for the tahini for those tree nut and sesame allergic. Thanks
Hi Larysa, I’m afraid that nothing will quite achieve the flavor of tahini, but you could try sunflower butter. I haven’t tasted it so not sure how the flavors would work, but it is worth a try.