About Couscous
The Real Taste of Traditional Couscous
The Real Taste of Traditional Couscous
Couscous is the main staple food of Maghreb’s. It is widely common in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. With the immigration of Moroccan, Tunisian and Algerian people to Europe; Europe met with couscous and it became a popular food and meal especially in France, Spain and Netherlands. North Africa is the home land of couscous, but due to high demand from Maghreb’s and due to popularity among the Europeans, new production plants are assembled in Italy and France. Couscous is formed by rounding the steamed semolina and drying it. It has a round shape which is more or less 3mm thick.
The word “couscous” is derived from the Arabic word “Kaskasa” and Berber word “Seksu”. “Kaskasa” means to pound until the particles are tiny. “Seksu” means to be rounded. Both of the words appeal to the shape and production style of couscous.
Couscous is estimated to be used and cooked since 7th Century. The introduction of couscous to Europe was done during 17th century. Ibn Battuta, an important travel writer of his age was the first one to mention couscous in a book. In his book Rihla, he explained about the couscous and its importance in the lives of the North African people.
Couscous which is the staple food of Maghreb’s has been traditionally prepared in the homes. It was produced from high qualıty semolina and women always prepared their couscous during summer time in quantities to be enough to be consumed until next summer. Later due to high level of demand, couscous production plants were stablished. As ZIAF, we deliver the real homemade couscous taste to our valuable consumers, it is important to tell about the traditional way of making couscous as well as industrial one.
Place semolina on a tray.
Wet your hand a little and round the semolina by pressing and moving your hand round wise on the tray.
When couscous are formed, have the semolina and couscous mixture on a sieve and separate couscous and semolina by moving the sieve.
The grains left over the sieve are couscous grains. They should be placed separately. Semolina will drop from the sieve.
Continue these steps until all of the semolina is turned to be couscous.
Semolina is moisturized and by mixing continuously it obtains a round shape.
Some of the couscous are finer and some are coarser than the standard size. Therefore, with sized sieves, small and big grains are separated. Finer grains are delivered to the first step of the process again to be formed bigger in size to fit to the standard while coarser grains are pounded to semolina and then delivered to the first step of the production.
Right sized grains are steamed to hold tight.
After the steaming process, grains are dried by drying machines.
Finally, the couscous is packed.
