Food

The World’s Largest Falafel

See below for a video of the largest falafel. Image by Thinkstock

By Blair Thornburgh August 2, 2012

After careful planning and preparation, a team comes together for the ultimate test of their skills. Judges are watching, reputations are on the line, and the heat is palpable. A record is about to be broken — but not in London. Last Saturday, 10 Jordanian chefs achieved gastronomic glory when they fried up the world’s largest falafel.

The champion chickpea fritter weighed in just shy of 165 pounds, over three times as heavy as the previous title-holder. The recipe was scaled-up, too: 176 pounds of chickpeas, 11 pounds of onions, and over four pounds of parsley were mixed by hand before a 25-minute dunk in 92 gallons of vegetable oil. After being carefully inspected and certified “ginormous” by Guinness Book of World Records officials, the colossal falafel became a feast for 600 gathered at the Landmark Hotel in Amman, Jordan.

The falafel title has been turned over twice in the past two years, and other Middle Eastern foodstuffs are also perenially contentious targets for international competition — in both size and provenance. Lebanon and Israeli both lay claim to being the birthplace of hummus, and have continuously one-upped each other to make mammoth portions of the chickpea dip: at 23,042 pounds, Lebanon is the current record holder as of May 2010, nearly doubling the 9,000 pounds Israeli chefs prepared only a few months earlier.

No word on who will roll out the world’s next record-busting falafel. But if patriotic chefs are looking to try their hand at another titantic tidbit, the the 421-foot world’s longest pita has been sitting pretty since 2008.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’re near the end of our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we have a very ambitious goal of $127,000 by April 21.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO