Chicken Legs with Couscous
I made chicken with couscous. Walk into almost any place in the Middle East or North Africa where you can eat quickly, tasty and cheap, and the first thing they will offer you is most likely couscous. Many of “us” have only a vague idea of what couscous is and usually say no, preferring grilled meat or chicken, though they will ask for rice with their vegetables. And they are quite wrong to refuse. Coming from North and East Africa, couscous is excellent, very tasty food. Surprisingly, such a simple dish can be so varied.
The national cuisines of the North African countries, Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia, and Lebanon too, although it is not on the African continent, are unthinkable without couscous. In essence, couscous is semolina. Yes! The very same semolina that we were made to eat as a hated porridge from early childhood. Some people like it, but I couldn’t stand it! I admit, I would never have thought… semolina.
It turns out that making couscous is quite interesting, though simple. As the locals who smoke a hookah say, it is women’s work. Semolina and flour are poured onto a huge platter, sprinkled with water and rubbed between the fingers with circular movements. Gradually lumps and little pellets form and grow bigger over time. Then everything is sifted, and what stays in the sieve is couscous. It is quite laborious, though not difficult.
Since semolina is ordinary wheat groats, only ground very fine, couscous, as a derivative of semolina, is also a wheat product.
Couscous, kus-kus, couscous, or Arabic كسكس, Hebrew קוסקוס, is a very tasty grain with a delicate flavor that readily absorbs the smell and taste of the sauce it is cooked with. In the East there are special two-tier pots: the sauce cooks in the bottom part, and the couscous in the top part steams, soaking up the fragrant steam of the sauce. By the way, here in Europe, and often in its historic homeland too, “factory” couscous is used and is not steamed. Most often it is a semi-finished product that you simply cover with boiling water.
The classic way of preparing couscous is usually considered to be steaming it with mint and sprinkling it with lemon juice. It goes wonderfully with mutton or lamb: when you are in the East, look on restaurant menus for Couscous Bidaoui (lamb couscous). In coastal regions there is superb couscous with fish or shellfish. It often replaces bulgur in tabbouleh.
Couscous with vegetables can be found everywhere, and I think it is the tastiest. And there is also the wonderful sweet dessert couscous with fruit and raisins, called masfuf. Couscous with poultry, usually chicken, is just as common in the East as smoking a hookah. Wherever you go, you will be offered chicken couscous, an Eastern version of chicken fricassee with a side dish.
Ingredients
2 servings
- Couscous 1 cup
(170 g) - Water for the stock 3–4 cups (150 ml of stock for the couscous)
- Chicken legs 2
- Carrot 1
- Onion 1
- Celery and parsley roots 50 g each
- Chickpeas 0.5 cup
(80 g) - Butter 50 g
- Spices: black pepper, bay leaf, salt to taste
- Fresh parsley to taste
Step-by-step recipe
To keep the chicken with couscous simple, we will use ready-made couscous, for obvious reasons. It is sold practically everywhere now.
One pack of grain is enough for 3-4 meals for two. By the way, the cooking instructions for your particular couscous are always on the package. They can differ significantly.
Couscous does not need rinsing, as grains usually do. Just measure out what you need and cook it. One more thing: remember to soak the chickpeas in advance.
First we will make the sauce, or rather the chicken with vegetables, since couscous cooks very quickly. Bring a little water to a boil in a pot and add the chicken pieces. Which pieces to use is up to you. We used chicken drumsticks, which are very convenient for portions and have a lot of meat. And, as a little friend of ours says, they are very handy to hold. As soon as foam appears and the water starts to boil, I recommend pouring the water out and rinsing the chicken. Store-bought chicken, unfortunately, makes the broth very cloudy.
Next, pour 3-4 cups of water (600–800 ml) into the pot and bring to a boil again. Add the chicken pieces to the boiling water, along with 1-2 bay leaves and the roots: carrot, celery and parsley.
Peel the roots beforehand and dice them. The carrot can be cut larger, and the celery and parsley smaller. It is better not to add salt or spices to the broth, maybe just a pinch of fragrant dried herbs to taste.
Add the soaked chickpeas to the boiling broth. Cook everything for 20-25 minutes. What matters is that the chickpeas are cooked; the other ingredients will certainly be done.
In a frying pan, melt half of the butter and fry the finely chopped onion in it until it just starts to turn golden. Take the chicken pieces out of the broth and set aside. Also remove all the vegetables and chickpeas; simply pour the broth into a separate container, as you will need some of it. Discard the bay leaf. Transfer the vegetables to the pan with the fried onion and fry over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the remaining liquid evaporates. Take the pan off the heat and put the chicken pieces on top of the vegetables. Cover the pan with a lid and keep it somewhere warm so it does not cool down.
Meanwhile, pour into a pot the amount of broth needed to cook the couscous, as written on the package. In my case it recommended the same weight of water as grain, plus a little salt and fat. I took a cup of couscous (170 g) (that is 150 grams, I weighed it) and 150 ml of broth. I added a pinch of salt and ground black pepper to the broth and put it on the heat. As soon as the broth boiled, I added the couscous.
I took the pot off the heat and started stirring the grain with a fork. It absorbs the liquid very well. After 3 minutes I put the pot back on low heat and added the remaining butter to the couscous.
As soon as the butter melted, I turned off the heat and let the couscous stand for 2-3 minutes. And that’s it. The couscous became fluffy and soft.
Put the finished couscous on a large plate.
It is customary to put the sauce, meat or vegetables on top of the side dish. So level the couscous on the plate to make an even layer.
Put the vegetables with chickpeas and the chicken pieces on top of the couscous.
I recommend arranging parsley, and mint if you have it, around the edge of the plate. That makes the chicken with couscous especially fragrant.
Chicken with couscous and vegetables is ready. I recommend making it again, you will like it.
Calories and macros
970 kcal
Serving ≈ 510 g
- Protein42 g18% of kcal
- Fat46 g45% of kcal
- Carbs85 g37% of kcal
100 g192 kcalProtein 8.3 gFat 9.1 gCarbs 16.9 g
Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.
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