Egypt's ancient national breakfast—slow-cooked fava beans mashed with cumin, garlic, and lemon, drizzled with olive oil and topped with sliced egg. A meal that has fed the Egyptian people for 5,000 years.
Ful medames is possibly the oldest continuously eaten dish in the world. Archaeologists have found evidence of fava beans cooked in ceramic vessels in ancient Egypt predating the pharaohs—the bean that fed the slaves who built the pyramids is the same bean eaten for breakfast in Cairo today. The name comes from Arabic: ful (beans) and medames (buried), a reference to the ancient cooking method of burying sealed clay pots of beans in embers overnight. Today ful is cooked in specialized long-handled copper or aluminum pots called qidra, and every Egyptian street corner has a ful cart set up before dawn. It is eaten by everyone—rich and poor, workers and professionals, eaten at home and in the street, always in the morning. The additions—cumin, garlic, lemon, olive oil, egg—vary by region and by family, but the fava beans themselves are non-negotiable. Ful is Egypt in a bowl.
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