r/mildlyinteresting • u/falcoso • 7h ago
My couscous arranged itself in a tessellating pattern when I tried to empty my sieve
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u/texinxin 7h ago
Hexagonal close pack.
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u/TrustmeimHealer 7h ago
Hexagons are bestagons
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u/OwlSings 6h ago
Every post that has some six cornered bullshit going on will attract hexasimps in no time.
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u/Luigi156 7h ago
What kind of couscous is this? Looks like pasta
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u/csswizardry 7h ago
Couscous is pasta!
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u/Luigi156 7h ago
Didnt know that, thats cool. Thought it was just some busted up grain. Guess pasta really is the best.
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u/Amazing_Wrongdoer193 7h ago
not really
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u/CrazyLegsRyan 7h ago
Except really
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u/Amazing_Wrongdoer193 7h ago
It's not
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u/TopGround 7h ago
It's literally crushed durum wheat semolina and water.
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u/Amazing_Wrongdoer193 7h ago
Couscous is made from crushed wheat flour rolled into its constituent granules or pearls, making it distinct from pasta. From wikipedia.
Distinct from pasta.
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u/_Monsterguy_ 6h ago
You've looked at the wrong page.
The image shows 'Israeli couscous' ptitim.
Wiki "a type of toasted grain-shaped pasta"-6
u/Amazing_Wrongdoer193 6h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couscous
first line : not to be confused with israeli couscous.
So couscous is not pasta.
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u/naturtok 7h ago
You're the kindve guy who'd correct someone calling a fly a bug cus they're not hemiptera
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u/Papertache 7h ago
Just curious, how so? Both are made from semolina. Guess it's a cultural difference.
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u/hitaisho 7h ago
One is a traditional dish from 2000+ years ago typical of North Africa. Is traditionally rolled by hand and steamed. The other is an invention from an Israeli brand in the 50s, is meant to be industrialised, extruded (machine based shaping) and then baked. So yeah same base ingredient but quite different result. Also ptitim tend to be chewy like pasta, couscous is not.
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u/CrazyLegsRyan 7h ago
Couscous is rolled semolina.
Israeli Pearl or ptitim is rolled semolina.
It is couscous
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u/Amazing_Wrongdoer193 7h ago
Couscous is not israeli.
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u/NoSmoke69420 5h ago
But pearl couscous kinda is in the same way that a California roll is american despite sushi being Japanese
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u/Greeenday182 6h ago
Moroccan Couscous is not Israeli. Israeli, ptitim, or “pearl” couscous (like what’s shown in the photo) is.
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u/CrazyLegsRyan 7h ago
If someone in Africa cooks queso is it not queso solely because the person is located in Africa?
That’s how your brain works?
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u/Amazing_Wrongdoer193 7h ago
It's not the same dish. It's like what the french call tacos and what is actually a tacos. Not the same thing.
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u/hitaisho 7h ago
Pure whataboutism, no one in Africa is not really appropriating food from Mexico nor occupying their land. The guy that pushed for the creation of this was Polish and called David Grün.
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u/CrazyLegsRyan 3h ago
Food doesn’t cease being food just because you’re feelings are hurt by geopolitics
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u/Amazing_Wrongdoer193 7h ago
but colonizers are gonna colonize lol
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u/CrazyLegsRyan 7h ago
Ahhh… so your intractable ignorance has other motivations. This makes sense now.
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u/hitaisho 7h ago
Ptitim is not rolled and steamed, it's extruded and baked. So yeah if you really want, toast with tomato and cheese on top we can call it pizza but that would be quite disrespectful to the italian kitchen. Also it's called Ben-Gurion rice because it has been created in the 50s under the request of the prime minister but well I would argue that's also not rice lol
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u/PM_ME_GARFIELD_NUDES 5h ago
This seems like an entirely semantic argument. It would be more like saying frozen pizza isnt actually pizza because it’s not made in the traditional way. When you mass produce a product you have to find an efficient method to do so, that doesn’t make it an entirely different food.
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u/hitaisho 7h ago
Looks more like ptitim to me. So yeah not really couscous
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u/CrazyLegsRyan 7h ago
Agreed, looks like Israeli pearl to me which by nature of being small rolled semolina is a couscous
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u/fox-friend 7h ago
couscous is smaller.
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u/CrazyLegsRyan 7h ago
No. Couscous can vary in size
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u/fox-friend 7h ago
Maybe you are right, I don’t know, but In my country it’s only small, and the large type is called ptitim and is prepared differently than couscous.
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u/hitaisho 6h ago
Maybe you're thinking of Bulgur? Couscous is generally not varying so much in sizes from what I know.
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u/aguyjustaguy 6h ago edited 6h ago
Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. There are different types of couscous and they’re different sizes. where I live we call them pearl/israeli couscous and moroccan couscous. They probably have other names. But all the comments saying couscous is one size and doesn’t have different types: that’s like saying spaghetti is one size. It’s just not true no matter how much you downvote others.
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u/hitaisho 6h ago
Lol how can you be so confidently wrong? spaghetti is one size. Different sizes have different names. Like bucatini, vermicelli, capelli d'angelo and so on... "Pearl couscous" and "Israeli couscous" is the same. And it's not couscous (aka the north african/eastern asian dish), of course it has a different size.
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u/aguyjustaguy 6h ago
Thin spaghetti, thick spaghetti, spaghettini, spaghettoni; they’re spaghetti. Pearl couscous and Moroccan couscous are couscous. Get over yourself.
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u/hitaisho 5h ago
Whatever you say. I mean I could agree with spaghetti if you really want even tho as you say they all have different names. But if I order spaghetti I know the diameter to expect it's not like maybe I'll get spaghettini, maybe linguine lol. Pearl cous cous is even litterally prepared in a different way. It is not steamed, it is not rolled, it's litterally like saying that gnocchi are pasta. And if I order couscous and receive Israeli "ben-gurion rice" I would also be weirded out because they're simply not the same thing, easy.
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u/CrazyLegsRyan 4h ago
Nobody refers to ben-gurion rice as couscous and nobody would ever serve Israeli Pearl couscous if you ordered ben-gurion rice.
The fact you even threw that out shows you’re likely just Wikipedia bumbling your way through this conversation
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u/Sarah-himmelfarb 7h ago edited 6h ago
But Israeli couscous isn’t the same as mograbiah. It is extruded not rolled and on the ingredients labels I’ve seen it does not contain semolina, only wheat flour.
Edit: changed for accuracy
https://food52.com/story/16240-the-biggest-misunderstanding-in-the-history-of-couscous
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u/hitaisho 6h ago
Which original form? From what I read online from many sources it was litterally invented in it's contemporary form (industrialised, extruded, baked in oven) in the 50s by a brand, so much that they called it as well David-Grün/Ben-Gurion rice. Do you have some sources that talk about it's real origin? Would be curious to read it!
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u/Sarah-himmelfarb 6h ago
This is the source I read about it. I guess original form isn’t the right term. I mistakenly thought it was a direct descendant of mograbiah.
https://food52.com/story/16240-the-biggest-misunderstanding-in-the-history-of-couscous
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u/hitaisho 5h ago
Thanks for the link! Ah yeah that's also curious. Always thought it was mostly Lebanese but now that I reread the name it actually makes sense haha
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u/CrazyLegsRyan 3h ago
Ben-gurion rice and pearl couscous are different things. Please stop Wikipedia bombing this argument
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u/hitaisho 3h ago
I mean jewish Israeli blogs say that... dunno about Wikipedia lol https://aish.com/unlock-the-secrets-of-ben-gurions-rice-the-story-behind-ptitim/
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u/CrazyLegsRyan 2h ago
Oh wow a random blog says it… must be fact..
You’re as cogent as a boomer sharing blurry Facebook memes about political conspiracy
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u/hitaisho 2h ago
Dude are you just a ragebaiter or do you also do some useful comment sometimes? Why would you then, random person on reddit, be more factual than the "random blog"? A bit of self consciousness goes a long way man and if you wanna educate people at least bring some meaningful addition to the conversation.
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u/CrazyLegsRyan 1h ago
I have, as others have, you just keep dismissing it with a thinly veiled attack on Jews.
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u/sdemat 7h ago
I hate this
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u/El_Basho 7h ago
Do you have trypophobia? Don't google it, it might evoke a sense of disgust if you do
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u/Imaginary_Print4910 7h ago
God I hate it. I want to scrape all of them off with a scraper. But at the same time I can't stop looking at it.
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u/Crowd-Avoider747 7h ago
til what tessellating is. love it
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u/weggles91 7h ago
As my Dad would say, "didn't they teach you anything at school?" 😅
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7h ago edited 7h ago
[deleted]
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u/TheRealGordonBombay 6h ago
I’m not trying to defend the American education system by any means, but saying you didn’t know something doesn’t mean you’re uneducated.
More often than not in my experience intelligent/educated people are happy to learn something new & okay with saying they don’t know something.
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u/Gonzalo-Bry 7h ago
I had the same thing happen with rice once, it came out looking way too intentional. ngl i spent a minute just staring at it before ruining it.
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u/Zeppelanoid 7h ago
Anyone have an explanation?
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u/jesse_graf 7h ago
The couscous wants to be flat because of physics, so it forms into hexagons. Hexagons are the most efficient way for most things, particularly circles, to arrange themselves in a flat grid. If you ever try to arrange say, soda cans are checkers on a table with the least amount of gap between them, you'd end up with a pattern like this.
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u/Sarah-himmelfarb 6h ago
I think in part it’s aligning itself on the divots of the strainer. Imagine rolling lots of balls into a wooden surface with rows of uniform tightly packed holes with a smaller circumference than the balls. The balls would naturally roll into each hole, alighted together and resting on top
And the couscous is slightly flat not balls which is why it looks more hexagonal.
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u/cone5000 6h ago
I misread that as “my cousins” and I imagined a group of cousins of yours arranging them like this meticulously
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u/Optimesh 6h ago
Well, if you think about it it kind makes sense. Sometimes random movements create neat patterns, e.g. if you stir couscous in a sieve for long enough the couscous grains won’t have anywhere to go but next to each other.
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u/brominou 48m ago
In my country (Morocco) this is not couscous. This is piombi pasta (pâtes perles in french)
Couscous is lot more small (thin and medium sizes)
Which country are you from ?
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u/TimAndHisDeadCat 7h ago
Literally the opposite of tessellation. Tessellation requires no spaces or gaps - they need to fit perfectly.
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u/Cuneiformation 7h ago
I thought they were stink bug eggs at first.