Giant Couscous Summer Salad
Entertain with a vibrant Giant Couscous Summer Salad—traffic light colours, chewy couscous, crunchy veggies, creamy chickpeas, all in a tangy lemon dressing.Before You StartThis salad is perfect made 1-2 hours before serving and kept at room temperature.
Servings: 6 servings
Equipment
- Medium saucepan with a heavy lid (or place something heavy on top to keep it down)
Ingredients
- 375 ml stock chicken or vegetable (note)
- Tablespoon olive oil
- 250 g Israeli couscous (also known as Israeli or pearl couscous)
- big handful parsley leaves (about 15g)
- small handful mint leaves (about 5g)
- 200 g cherry tomatoes
- 115 g canned chickpeas
- Lebanese cucumber
Dressing
- 80 ml olive oil
- Zest and juice 1-2 lemons (about 60ml of juice)
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- ¾ teaspoon ground black pepper
Instructions
- Make Up Stock – we need 375ml.375 ml stock
- Toast Couscous - heat the oil in a medium heavy-based saucepan. Toast the couscous for a minute or two, stirring often with a wooden spoon so that it doesn’t stick. It will darken slightly.Tablespoon olive oil250 g Israeli couscous
- Cook Couscous – pour over the stock, stir well and bring to a boil over high heat. Put the lid on the pan and immediately turn the heat to a minimum. You may want to move the pan to a smaller heat source on your stove top. If the lid is not well fitting and heavy, weigh it down with something heavy. Cook for 10 minutes without lifting the lid. Meanwhile, prep the rest of the ingredients.
Prep Ingredients – transfer the ingredients to a large bowl as you prepare them:
- Parsley & Mint – finely chop.big handful parsley leavessmall handful mint leaves
- Tomatoes – chop into small pieces.200 g cherry tomatoes
- Chickpeas - empty the chickpeas into a sieve under running water and wash off all the gloopy starch water. Shake the excess water off.115 g canned chickpeas
- Cucumber - cut the cucumber in half (no need to peel). Use a teaspoon to scoop out the watery seeds and discard before chopping the flesh into small cubes.Lebanese cucumber
- Make Dressing – shake up the dressing ingredients in a screw-top jar. and pour over the salad.80 ml olive oilZest and juice 1-2 lemons¾ teaspoon salt¾ teaspoon ground black pepper
- Rest Couscous – when the 10 minutes’ cooking time is up, without lifting the lid, remove the pan from the heat. Leave to stand for 10 minutes.
- Dress Couscous – pour the shaken-up dressing over the couscous. Tumble in the chickpeas (leaving the other ingredients for now). Fold through with a flexible spatula. Some of the couscous will clumped together. You can press on these with a flexible spatula to separate them. The oily dressing coating will keep them separate. Put the lid back on and leave for another 15 minutes.
- Finish Salad – tip in the herbs, tomatoes and cucumber and fold though. You can serve now, slightly warm, or leave at room temperature for up to 3-4 hours.
Notes
Stock - if using my Vegetable Stock Paste, you’ll need ½ tablespoon of stock paste in 375ml water.
Lemons - the juiciness and sweetness of lemons is highly variable. You can’t always tell from the size of the outside how much juice you’re going to get too! Lemon’s that are very hard tend to have thicker pith (the white part under the yellow zest) and less juice. Start with zesting one lemon and then cut in half and squeeze out the juice. Stop there if you have about 60ml (4 tablespoons’ worth) or use a second lemon if you need. Always zest before you juice. Zesting a cut lemon is fiddly!
Make Ahead
As with most salads, this tastes best if made a few hours before serving. But, it will keep better than most salads, up to 3 days in the fridge. You can refresh leftovers by stirring though an extra spritz of lemon juice, a sprinkle more salt and pepper and drizzle of oil.