Hand-Rolled Couscous

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hand-rolled couscous
It looks like couscous to us.

The other day, someone asked why we don’t make more dishes that involve couscous. To which we could only reply, “We don’t know. We just don’t. We don’t even think much about couscous.” Now, all you couscous lovers out there are probably thinking that we’re missing out on something great, and, perhaps, we are, so we decided to find out.

Naturally, we just jumped in at the deep end, and, rather than buying couscous, we figured that we could make it from scratch. After all, people have made couscous by hand for thousands of years; we figured we could try making it at least once. So, we hit the books, searched the info, came up with our own modifications, bought some semolina flour, and made some hand-rolled couscous. If it doesn’t turn out, well, that’s okay, because we had fun, regardless.

Since we were just testing, we made a small amount, but we don’t see why you can’t double the amounts listed to make more.

Hand-Rolled Couscous

Servings: 4 ounces
Author: Shawn

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup semolina flour (85 g)
  • Pinch salt
  • 1/4 cup water (60 g)

Instructions

  • In a large bowl with a nearly-flat bottom, mix together flour and salt.
  • With one hand, sprinkle a bit of water onto the flour mixture and use your other hand to rub it into the flour; do this gently. Continue adding sprinkles of water and lightly working it into the flour until very small pellets form and the mixture is uniformly moist. You may not use all the water.
  • Transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet, breaking up any large lumps, and let dry overnight.

Ingredient discussion:

We think you pretty much have to buy semolina flour if you want to make couscous. Since this was our first time, we picked up a bag of Bob’s Red Mill Semolina flour, figuring that, if the couscous didn’t work, we could use it to make pasta — semolina is often used for that.

Procedure in detail:

salt and semolina
Just the tiniest pinch of salt will keep your couscous from tasting like wallpaper paste.

Mix flour and salt. Break out a large bowl with a fairly flat bottom (we think that a 9×13-inch baking pan would work, too). You want the flat bottom so you can rub and push around the semolina, and you need a large bowl for space to work. Pour in the semolina, add the salt, and swish it around with your hands to combine.

making couscous
Work the water into the semolina slowly and gently. You’ll see that you get small pellets, and not a dough.

Sprinkle and rub. When we were researching how to make couscous, we found a number of people who suggested putting the water into a mister and lightly spraying it onto the semolina. We didn’t, for two reasons: one, we doubt that anyone had misters a thousand years ago, and, two, we don’t have one now. So, lightly sprinkle water onto the semolina with one hand, while you swish and rub the mixture with the other. Be gentle; you want to make little clumps of flour, not a dough, or anything slightly sticky, so add just a bit of water at a time, and a lot of swishing. Continue until all the semolina has collected into small lumps between 1/16th of an inch and 1/8th of an inch, and the mixture feels uniformly moist. It should not feel wet.

hand-rolled couscous
Who knew it would be so easy to make couscous from scratch? Well, probably millions of Northern Africans, that’s who.

Dry overnight. At this time, we knew we’d be adding the couscous to boiling water and not steaming it, and we were worried that, if we used the couscous right away, it would combine into one big gloppy mess. We decided that allowing the couscous to dry should help keep it from sticking together in a big gloppy mess (the way dried pasta doesn’t stick together), so we dried our couscous overnight. To do so, transfer to a baking sheet lined with parchment and set it in a place that won’t be disturbed, and you’ll have a fresh batch of couscous in the morning.

Now, we will tell you that we cooked this by bringing 1 1/2 cups of water per cup of couscous to a boil, adding the couscous, removing from the heat, covering, and letting it steam for 5-6 minutes, which we think is often the way couscous is cooked in the US. Traditionally, however, couscous is steamed in a couscousiere, which we don’t have, and we guess that most people reading this don’t have, either. Now, while we’re sure that we’ve had couscous in the past, we can’t remember it, so we have no basis for comparing this Hand-Rolled Couscous to other types of couscous, so we can’t rate it (we might in the future, though).

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