You may have seen hummus from time to time, and perhaps it’s even found a place on your plate occasionally, but how much do you really know about it? Here are three things you may care to know about this healthy meal before your next serving:
1. Where, Exactly, Did Hummus Come From?
Hummus is actually a very multicultural dish. Recipes with hummus in different forms can trace their origins to scores of Middle Easter countries such as Palestine, Egypt, Yeman, Syria, and Israel. Of course the hummus recipes have evolved a fair bit since those origins. Recipes using hummus didn’t really appear on the American scene until the nineteen sixties and seventies specifically as health food. In a few decades’ time, it gained popularity with the mainstream consumer culture, especially with the advent of new recipes with hummus that make use of different, appealing flavors.
2. What is Hummus?
A recipe with hummus was traditionally just a way of preparing chickpeas. Hummus is actually the Arabic word for chickpeas, although people may not recognize it as such immediately. Of course now recipes with hummus have grown more complicated, involving all sorts of additional ingredients like olive oil, paprika, and chopped parsley. All these work together to make an unforgettable flavor!
3. How Interesting Can Hummus Possibly Be?
Many people cook hummus around the world. It’s a common dish. What sets it apart from some other foods is the quantity that it has been cooked in. The largest hummus dish ever cooked, as recorded by the Guinness Book of World Records, weighed in at over twelve tons! That is more than twelve average cars. That includes about eight tons of chick peas, two tons of tahini, two tons of lemon juice, and more than one hundred fifty pounds of olive oil. That’s certainly an impressive number, but imagine how difficult it must have been to sort out the leftovers! What do you think about hummus?
