After a slightly shaky start (not naming names but a couple of us forgot our contribution, so trials had to be postponed for a day), on Friday we put houmous to the test.

Dating back to the 13^th century, hummous, in its various forms, has become a favourite dip the world over – in this office there is very rarely fewer than two pots festering in the back of the fridge.

So, after some heated debate about what was allowed in the taste test (Sharan’s favourite is a red pepper pesto hommos, but that was NOT allowed), the final list included; Morrison’s, Tesco, Tesco Organic, Sainsbury’s, Sainsbury’s Be Good to Yourself (this one had to be snuck in), Waitrose, M&S and a homemade version made by Sarah’s fair hands.

The voting criteria for each hummous went a little something like this; Colour, Initial Taste, Texture, Overall ‘Happiness’ – it was supposed to include ‘Garlicyness’ but we decided that would take too long to manifest (friends and family will get the benefit of that later in the day!).

After a bit of debate about the best crudités (good work Claire), with a choice between carrots, celery, bread sticks and tortilla chips, we got to the hard job of judging.  Comments on the humu from our panel included;

“Watery… salty… sick!…gloopy…fish… plasticy…tangy… supermodel (??)… overcooked porridge

And this from a team who pretty much all love hummos!!

Before we get on to the awards, special dispensation needs to be made for Sarah’s hommus.  She made it at 8am and, understandably, didn’t actually taste it, so whilst it scored very highly for looks and texture, unfortunately it didn’t taste of much…

So to the results of the hummous taste test;

1 – Morrison’s -190/280

2 – Homemade – 181/280 (going forward it will be emphasised that results are confidential and Sarah will not be using them in performance reviews- I hope)

3 – Waitrose – 175/280

4 -  Sainsbury’s Be Good to Yourself – 161/280

5 – Tesco – 157.5/280

6 – Tesco Organic – 136/280

7 – Sainsbury’s – 119.5/280

8 – M&S – 116/280

A shocking result for the hamos!? NB – By way of disclaimer, we ran out of carrot sticks early on, so switching crudités probably didn’t help with consistency.

So, to win the left overs, how many different spellings of homos are there?!