This Gizmo Guarantees You Never Again Need Fret Over Spreading Hummus Perfectly on Your Pita

Remember that “Oreo Separator Machine” that used physics to wipe the cream off the iconic chocolate round wafer cookie so you don't have to go to the trouble of doing it with a utensil (or your tongue)?

Inspired by that invention, an Israeli team over the weekend created an automated contraption to streamline the quintessential Mideast snack: hummus with pita bread.

A video they posted on YouTube shows the machine deconstructing the steps one normally takes when setting out to consume the chickpea spread on bread:

A conveyer pushes the round pita bread onto a cutting platform, then a rotary saw hacks the bread into two halves.

The round cutting board then rotates 90 degrees at which time the saw separates the bread into quarters in one swift slice. (You definitely don’t want to get in the way of that intimidating blade.)

A clamp then grasps one quarter circle of the bread, travels in reverse, and hovers over a rapidly rotating plate of hummus.

The swoosh! The pita is swiped over the plate, getting a nice dose of the high-protein hummus, which is usually prepared using chickpeas, sesame paste, lemons, olive oil, and other spices.

Watch the video here:

“It’s the year 2013 and we’ve been wiping hummus for so many years by hand, so it’s time for technology to move into this place like many things,” web designer Yuri Klebanov says.

He, along with industrial designer Itzik Meir, created the machine; Klebanov spoke to TheBlaze in a telephone interview from Jerusalem.

The pair built the prototype in just two days and entered it into the GeekCon competition near Caesarea, Israel. Klebanov describes it as an annual “weekend hackathon where people meet up and build crazy stuff, mainly machines, but anything goes. If you have a crazy project you submit it to the website.”

Klebanov says he and his design partner would still like to “tweak” their machine. “We want a perfect version that will do everything automatically,” he says.

Check out the images below of the hummus-spreading machine in action:

Step One: The pita bread is pushed onto a round cutting surface (Image: YouTube)

Step Two: The pita is then sliced into four quarters by a rotary blade (Photo courtesy: Yuri Klebanov)

Step Three: A clamp grasps one quarter of the pita, then reverses direction toward a spinning plate of hummus (Image: YouTube)

Step Four: Let the dipping begin. Then time to eat! (Photo courtesy: Yuri Klebanov)

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