The Dish Of Jordan

Why do we eat what we eat? Why do people love eating their cultures food? Some people out there love trying other cultures food. Me as a person I love eating my culture’s food. It’s something special to me that I love eating once in a while. There’s a lot of history behind this dish that most people don’t know about. The ingredient’s of this recipe is hard to find because the world doesn’t know about it . I personally think that this dish should be known to the whole world for how good it taste’s. I love this dish because It tastes so good and brings old memories of what I used to do with my family with this recipe and I recommend people to try it.

The best dish in my country Jordan is called mansaf. This dish is one of the top best dishes in my country. It’s a traditional cultural recipe that we make and enjoy eating  and to represent the country. There’s a lot of countries in the Middle East that make this dish like Iraq and Syria but it is not as good as it is made in Jordan. It taste’s better in my Country because the dish is originally is made in Jordan.


This recipe is made out of yellow rice, yellow soup, beef on top of the rice and nuts on top of the rice. The main important part of the dis is the soup. The soup is made out of dry hard yogurt called jamid known in English as solid yogurt. . The Jamid yogurt is melted in hot water for 30 minutes and when it is melted the soup is already yellow we just add peppers and salt. The soup gives a big taste to the rice because the rice almost doesn’t have a taste unless we poor the soup on the rice. We make the rice turn yellow by adding sufflower and water to the pot so it could change the color of the rice.. We leave the pot on the grill for 30 minutes but when I used to live on a farm we used campfire in the desert. A sufflower is plant that is grown in the desert of the Middle East. This plant can be used for other things besides food, like creating medicine for people. Me and my family used to grow this plant on our farm  most of the time because instead of use going to pharmacies  we would make medicine with our own hands. We would melt the flower in boiled hot water with some salt and e drink it if we have a fever or if we have a bad scratch we would use it instead of alcohol .The beef on top of the rice is either made out of camel or goat. When we cook the camel me and my family kill the camel or the goat so that way when we cook it we cook it fresh. The goat is easy to kill we just tie its legs, say some religious words and then cut its throat with a knife. We let the goat dead on the ground for 15 minutes so it’s soul could come out of its body. Then we start taking out the fat, organs and other parts of its body for us to cook. The best par about that is we take the goats fur and make coats out of it for the winter. The fur of the goat has to be in a hot 100 degree boiled water for 24 hours so the fur can be clean and ready to be designed for a coat. After all that we clean the goats meat by  leaving the meet in hot water with olive oil and salt. You see we don’t use any type of olive oil, we use the olive oil that we made on our hand’s. My family has a lot of olive trees on the farm. They take the olive that is so black and the start squeezing it into the bucket with a squeezer. The reason why we take the black ones it’s because the black ones mean the olive is ready, if it is green then its not ready yet. When the meat is ready we put the meat inside the Jamid soup. The camel on the other side is hard to kill because we all know that the camel is huge. When we kill the camel we have tie his leg with a huge rope to to a big solid tree and put on his head a black bag. After that we grab a huge sword and cut it’s throat. When we cut it’s throat every single one of us runs away from him. The reason why run away from it’s because when the camel is dead it will start to kick and kill everything around it. We the camel is completely dead and it is laying on the ground we leave it on the ground for half an hour. After that we start cutting the camel taking out it’s organs, fat and the fur. We keep the meat of the camel and throw the rest away because it is not useful. Just like we cooked the goat the same thing we do with the camel meat except we leave it in the hot water with salt and olive oil for 32 hours. The nut’s are cooked normally in a pan with olive oil on the camp fire of the farm. The nuts are there for decoration but it makes a better taste for the rice when we poor the soup.

This dish was made in 1920 by Jordanian Desert Farmers. I knew it was created on that year from my grandfather. He told me his ancestor’s used to tell him and the others about this dish and on what year it was created. The same year when the food was created the government of Jordan made it officially the food of the country. They created this recipe so they could eat every time their hungry or to celebrate a holiday like Ramadan or Eid Adha. The desert Jordanian farmers took the yogurt and let it dry in the sun not even leaving one drop of liquid in the yogurt. The reason why the Jamid  yogurt is dry and solid like a rock Its because Jordanian farmers made the yogurt dry because there’s times when the goat cant make more yogurt. They saved a lot of yogurt by doing that and also the yogurt does not fungi too fast.


I love mansaf so much because every time I eat it I get flash backs of the old good days I had in my country. It let’s remember the days when I used to sit at night in the desert  and eating it with my cousins and family. I also love this dish because It’s so good and delicious. I like this dish home made by my father, it taste better in my opinion when it is home made. He has been making this dish for many years and he knows what use in the United States for this dish to make it taste the same as it is in my country. This recipe means the whole world to me from it amazing taste. I eat this dish because it represents where I’m from and it make’s me so proud of it’s beautiful taste. I’m from Jordan that’s why I’m proud of this recipe. Not every one know’s this dish but I recommend people to try it. It is so good and it is worth trying it. Not everyone has the same taste as mine but people got nothing to lose if they give it a shot.

This is the historical background of the mansaf and why I love this dish so much. People can always try different things to eat everyday. Enjoy other foods in this world even if you have never tried it that dish before. Always be proud of your culture for what foods they created.

"Mansaf!"by fiat.luxury is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

"File:Mansaf1.jpg"by Tarawneh is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

"File:Traditional Mansaf served on flatbread.jpg"by EvanCarroll is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0