Cooking With Fox: Chickpea & chorizo couscous

19 Aug, 2026

Over yonder in Neocities, Skep is hosting another virtual potluck. This year there's an optional theme for all the entries, which is "yellow"... which is unfortunate, because my entry for last year's potluck - the temple dahl - is just about the most yellow thing in my regular cookbook. This left me in a bit of an indecisive flurry, as I started to dig around my notes, cookbooks and photo galleries for more golden goodies. About the only thing I could think that really fit the bill was my go-to pasanda recipe, but I don't really want to typecast myself as the white boy Indian food guy (for the record, our go-to pasanda recipe is just the one here, but I reduce the amount of liquid and increase the amount of ground almond and spices).

But then, during a regular lazy workday evening, I was struck with a realisation. I was thinking too fancily, too eager to to come up with some sort of a mass-serving dish I could easily think about bringing to an IRL potluck. In reality, the perfect yellow answer was in one of our easiest, scrappiest, and yet tastiest, bog-standard weekend dinners.

Chickpea & chorizo couscous

So as said, this is something that takes about half an hour max from prep to plate, is pretty low-effort yet still feels like you're actively making a dish and being productive, and is easily modifiable to utilise whatever scraps you've got to throw in the pot together with the basics. In essence, it's a perfect thing to throw down when you're exhausted from work and want to quickly slap a tasty dinner together. You can easily increase the portions and, yeah, maybe it would make a nice addition to a potluck buffet. But here's how it goes.

Ingredients (for 2 people):

• Chickpeas - approx. 200g, drained and rinsed
• 100g chorizo (or more if you'd like), sliced finely or chopped into small chunks - you want this to crisp up when frying
• 1 onion, sliced into thin crescents
• 1 bell pepper, cut into small chunks
• Frozen peas, handful (we measure these by half a 30cl moomin cup which absolutely will not say anything to most of you)
• Frozen sweetcorn, handful (ditto)
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
• 1/4 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp salt
• Black pepper to taste
• 70g couscous, or 2 portions per the packet instructions of your specific brand
• Chicken stock - enough to make your couscous per the packet instructions (for us about 100ml) + approx. 50ml more
• Oil for frying

Method:

1. Prep your couscous in large bowl by mixing in the stock with the dry couscous, mix and then leave on the side covered, to wait for the rest of the gang to get together.
2. Fry the chorizo in a large frying pan in a bit of oil until crispy, then move into a (different) bowl.
3. Fry the onions in the spicy oil left by the chorizo until they've started going a little translucent.
4. Add the rest of the veg you are using in stages, frying for 1-2 minutes at a time. If adding frozen ingredients e.g. the peas/corn, give a few extra minutes to make sure they thaw.
5. Add the chickpeas and again fry for 1-2 minutes.
6. Return the chorizo into the frying pan. Afterwards, add the spices + salt/pepper and stir them in with the rest of the ingredients.
7. Add the reserved splash of stock (ca. 50 ml) into the pan and allow to bubble away while stirring - it'll make a small amount of thick sauce.
8. Fluff the couscous, then pour everything from the frying pan into the couscous pot and stir everything together. Leave for a minute or so and then it's ready to serve.

Notes:

• As advised before, this is the kind of dish where you can throw whatever veg you've got that you want to use up before it goes. The mix of sweetcorn, peas and pepper is our "traditional" mix but not mandatory if you're not fan of any of these. Sometimes we do this with storebought bags of frozen veg or stir fry veg mix, especially if we've got scraps of them to use up.
• Same goes for the spices really too. The ones listed above are our standard mix but if you think this calls for something extra based on the flavour profile of the veg you use, go nuts! I'm pretty sure we've e.g. added a pinch of Old Bay in this before (thank you Brian David Gilbert for tuning us Europeans onto what this is).

If you give it a try - I hope you enjoy! And there's still time to sign up for the potluck too if you'd like to partake!

Want to comment or get in touch? You can send any thoughts through this link!

#cooking