Couscous salad recipe

Fast and easy couscous salade recipe with a delicious and healthy dressing, so it will be ready to eat after only 15 minutes of preparation.

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 could be in the dressing.
What makes a salad delicious is the dressing. Some dressings however aren’t freshly made, but come from a bottle with a long shelf life, mostly with some added sugars… So your healthy veggies get soaked in unhealthy transfat and unnecessary added sugars.

Counting calories… quantity vs quality!

When you count calories, always make sure you eat calories from a healthy source. I mean: when your calories come from sugars out of fizzy drinks, they have no other way to go in your body than to get transferred into fat. In contrast: take a delicious caesar salad: a creamy fresh mayo dressing and in olive oil fried croutons: this "little side dish" can easily contain up to 500 healthy calories. Although containing lots of fat, that fat isn’t as easily transferred into body fat. So that 500 calorie salad should be good to go, when that’s all you are eating during that serving.

When you want less calories, substitute some of the mayo with yogurt. 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 adding more yoghurt and keep on tasting until you find your personal mixture of yogurt-mayo.

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.

Now when you are on a strict paleo diet and you don’t eat diary – hence no yogurt -, the easiest and most delicious substitute for mayonnaise will be a ripe avocado mashed together with salt, lime, chopped onions and spices, better known as 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 ingredients

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 a cold couscous salad

1. Place the couscous in a large bowl. Add coriander, dill, basil, pepper and raisins and mix well.
2. Add a tablespoon of olive oil and stir well with a fork in order that nothing sticks together.
3. Boil water with some salt and once boiling, pour it over the couscous. Cover the couscous and let stand for 15 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, boil the eggs hard (10 minutes in boiling water), let them cool down under cold water and cut into pieces.
5. Meanwhile, wash the tomatoes, remove the seeds and cut the tomatoes into small pieces.
6. Drain the corn and set aside.
7. In another small bowl, add the yogurt with 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 tablespoon chives, salt and pepper and mix well.
8. Back to the couscous: after 15 minutes loosen the grains with a fork so that nothing sticks together.
9. Add the tomatoes, corn, chopped hard boiled eggs and the yogurt dressing and mix well.

Place your couscous salad in the refrigerator and serve it cold when you get hungry.