Couscous Couscous Couscous ( ' ; ') is a Maghrebi dish of small (about diameter) steamed balls of crushed durum wheat semolina that is traditionally served with a stew spooned on top. Pearl millet and sorghum especially in the Sahel and other cereals can be cooked in a similar way and the resulting dishes are also sometimes called couscous. Couscous is a staple food throughout the North African cuisines of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania, Libya, and Egypt. In Western supermarkets, it is typically sold in instant form with a flavor packet, and may be served as a side or on its
Semolina terms for wheat, "samita" and "godhuma", or may be loan words from the Semitic root "smd" – to grind into groats ("cf." ""). Modern milling of wheat into flour is a process that employs grooved steel rollers. The rollers are adjusted so that the space between them is slightly narrower than the width of the wheat kernels. As the wheat is fed into the mill, the rollers flake off the bran and germ while the starch (or endosperm) is cracked into coarse pieces in the process. Through sifting, these endosperm particles, the semolina, are separated from the bran. The semolina