Cooking Couscous: Cooking with Commercial Quick-Cooking Couscous

The commercial varieties of couscous we get in the U.S.A. are industrially precooked and instant. They are the “medium”-sized granules, which are best for ordinary couscous dishes. A “fine” size is used for the sweet couscous seffa that you will find in the dessert chapter (page 422), but the “medium” will also do. I visited a couscous factory in Sfax during an Oldways International Symposium in 1993 which took us on a fabulous gastronomic tour of Tunisia. We were received with welcoming banners, and offered a tasting of dozens of sumptuous couscous dishes—both savory and sweet—and a demonstration by women in Berber dress of the old ancestral ways of rolling couscous by hand. When the owner of the factory showed me around the plant, I asked him what the best way to use his product was, since packages sold abroad gave different instructions. He said that, although steaming is a ritual and part of the culture of North Africa, which the people are used to and hold on to (they steam everything, including vermicelli and rice), you could just as well add water and heat up the precooked couscous in the oven or a microwave. I know from hearing home cooks complain about their failures trying to steam precooked couscous that you are more likely to have success by simply heating it up in the oven, for example. I want couscous to be easy and trouble-free, so that people will adopt it. Couscous should be the easiest thing for you to make, but there is an art, even with the instant variety, to achieving a light, airy, separate, and digestible grain. Follow the instructions below for an easy way of preparing quick-cooking couscous in the oven and you will get good results.