Glazed Chicken with Couscous and Green Beans

Posted On July 31, 2020

July 31, 2020

3.9 Stars

Welcome to the Foodies Finding Flavor recipe series! In this series we will be reviewing recipes. We will search far and wide for accessible, tasty, healthy, and easy recipes that also have a good texture. When we are reviewing recipes that do not come from an open source, we will provide a link to the source and do our best to review the recipe without giving away the secret sauce (pun very much intended). This is review #1: Glazed Chicken with Couscous and Green Beans .Enjoy!!! Without further ado, the review.

Big Baby Says

Accessibility: 7 

Difficulty (higher means easier): 6

Healthfulness: 8

Tastiness: 9 

Texture: 8

Average: 7.6 

Chicken, couscous, green beans, and the other ingredients are fairly accessible. 

It was not that difficult to make. However, I couldn’t do it myself because I couldn’t chop vegetables or put stuff on a hot stove. 

It was extremely healthy with oranges and green beans accounting for the produce and the chicken gave it quite a bit of protein.

It was quite tasty [especially the couscous] however there was a problem with the sauce on the chicken. The chicken and the sauce blended nicely but the sauce tended to contaminate the couscous and make it too sour.

The texture of the chicken was soft the couscous was just like it usually tastes which made it perfectly fine.

This recipe is good for maybe serving it once every 2 weeks.

Now it is time to read my fellow critic mama foodie’s critique!!!!!!!!

Mama Foodie Says

Accessibility of Ingredients: 8 

Difficulty (higher means easier): 7

Healthfulness: 9

Tastiness: 9 

Texture: 7

Average: 8

When we hunkered down for social distancing in March, I had no idea that we would be staying at home this long. One positive thing that has come out of all of this is that we are now eating all of our meals together as a family. It definitely takes more planning and effort, but I really think the time together has been good for all of us. We are connecting a lot more as a family, and all three of us look forward to meal times. Glazed Chicken with Couscous and Green Beans

I have never been a lover of routines. We are just not a pizza on Friday, meatloaf on Thursday, taco Tuesday kind of family. Each week, I sit down to plan the following weeks meals.  Sometimes with input from Big Baby and his dad, and sometimes without. We have a few favorites that make the regular rotation, but I am often trying new recipes every week. I have quite a collection of cookbooks, I make frequent use of the internet, and I also subscribe to Cooking Light Magazine, which is the source of this recipe.

Everything on this list was fairly easy to get. Our current source for groceries did not have whole wheat couscous, but the recipe tasted just fine with regular plain Near East couscous.  The other ingredients were pretty normal staples. Chicken thighs, green beans, oranges and some spices were pretty easy to get. I didn’t have champagne vinegar, so I substituted apple cider vinegar instead. I was pretty happy with the tartness this added, but I think Big Baby would have preferred the champagne vinegar.  I forgot to order pine nuts, so we didn’t quite have enough for the recipe, but I used what we had on hand. The recipe says prep time is about 40 minutes, and that was fairly accurate.

As far as ease of preparation goes, there wasn’t anything complicated in this recipe. It did, however use multiple pots. You need one to cook the chicken, one to cook the green beans, and a third to cook the couscous.  Everything else is just chopping and mixing.

This dish was pretty healthy. It used 1 T of olive oil. I omitted the butter, and there wasn’t a big loss of flavor. If you wanted to make it even healthier, you could substitute chicken breasts for the thighs (We used boneless thighs, mainly because that was what was available this week).

Calories: 411

Fat: 18g (sat 4g, unsat. 12g)

Protein: 34g

Carb: 30g

Fiber: 6g

Sugars: 9g

This meal was a winner as far as taste goes. I served the glaze over the chicken and the couscous. I know Big Baby thought the sauce didn’t blend well with the couscous, but we can agree to disagree here.  I thought the flavors and the textures blended perfectly. The juicy chicken was the perfect contrast to the semi crisp green beans and the crunch of the scallions in the couscous.

You can find the recipe and a helpful video here:

https://www.cookinglight.com/recipes/glazed-chicken-with-couscous-and-green-beans

I will definitely be making this dish again.

See you next time.

-Mama Foodie and Big Baby