Fast and easy couscous salade recipe with a low fat healthy dressing: ready in 15 minutes with raisins, yogurt, tomatoes, egg and herbs.
So you are health conscious and when you go to a restaurant, you opt for your daily dose of veggies ordering one of the many salads on the menu: sounds healthy right?
Nothing better than raw vegetables, but the demon is in the dressing: what makes a salad delicious is a creamy mayonnaise, worse sometimes when the mayo comes from a bottle with a long shelf life. Not do you add huge amounts of fat to your veggies, the hardened fats in the dressing will clot your arteries slowly but surely.
Take a delicious caesar salad: a creamy mayo dressing and fried croutons: the more delicious when more oil was used for frying. A little side dish caesar salad can easily contain up to 500 calories. That should be good to go if that’s all you are eating that serving…
An easy substitute for mayonnaise is a not too sour yoghurt. You can start out by mixing 1/2 yoghurt under your mayo to find out that the taste is almost the same, minus 50% of the fat. Continue till as far as you can go adding more yoghurt.
For my typical French fries dressing I substituted mayonnaise with yoghurt, some salt, some mustard and added a pinch of curry powder heated a few minutes in a tiny bit of oil. Just use your imagination: there are so many things you can add in a yoghurt to make it more tasty, especially fresh herbs. If your imagination is not awake yet, just google for ideas.
The easiest and most delicious substitute for mayonnaise is a ripe avocado mashed together with salt, lime, chopped onions and spices: from a health and fat conscious point of view, compared to mayonnaise, it’s the holy grail or better the "holy guacamole".
The recipe below uses a salade dressing based on yoghurt with spices, herbs, hard boiled eggs and a little olive oil.
Easy couscous salad recipe
Serves 4.
For the couscous:
- 360 ml (12 1/4 US fluid ounces) water
- 240 gram (8 1/2 oz) couscous
- 1/2 tsp coriander powder
- 1/2 teaspoon dill
- 1/2 teaspoon basil
- 50 grams (about 2 oz) of raisins
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
For the salad dressing:
- 1 small pot of yoghurt
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
- salt and pepper to taste (do taste and adjust accordingly)
For the salad:
- a small can of corn (about 5 oz)
- 2 eggs
- 2 firm tomatoes
How to make couscous salad
- Place the couscous in a large bowl. Add coriander, dill, basil, pepper and raisins and mix well.
- Add a tablespoon of olive oil and stir well with a fork in order that nothing sticks together.
- Boil water with some salt and once boiling, pour it over the couscous. Cover the couscous and let stand for 15 minutes.
- Meanwhile, boil the eggs hard (10 minutes in boiling water), let them cool down under cold water and cut into pieces.
- Meanwhile, wash the tomatoes, remove the seeds and cut the tomatoes into small pieces.
- Drain the corn and set aside.
- In another small bowl, add the yogurt with 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 tablespoon chives, salt and pepper and mix well.
- Back to the couscous: after 15 minutes loosen the grains with a fork so that nothing sticks together.
- Add the tomatoes, corn, chopped hard boiled eggs and the yogurt dressing and mix well.
Place the couscous salad in the refrigerator and serve cold when needed.
