This is a proper “everything in one dish and walk away” dinner — chicken, pearl couscous, veg and a sweet-savoury coconut sauce with a little cheeky handful of raisins that somehow makes the whole thing. You whisk, you stir, you bake, you eat. Warmly spiced, deeply comforting, and generous enough to feed the family or set you up with lunches for days.
Who it’s for: anyone cooking for a household, anyone who batch-cooks for the week ahead, and anyone who wants big flavour without standing over the stove babysitting it.
- 500–600 g chicken breast, in chunks
- 1 cup pearl couscous
- 1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 zucchini, diced
- 2 tbsp raisins
- 200 ml coconut cream
- 1 cup chicken stock
- 1 tbsp tomato paste
- 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp smoked paprika, ½ tsp cinnamon
- Heat the oven to 190°C.
- In a baking dish, whisk the coconut cream, stock, tomato paste and spices.
- Stir in the couscous, veg and raisins.
- Nestle the chicken on top and spoon over some sauce.
- Cover and bake 30 min.
- Uncover and bake 15–20 min more until the chicken is cooked and the top is golden.
- Squeeze over lemon and rest 5 min before serving.
Pearl couscous is wheat, so this one isn’t gluten free.
Why this works
One-dish bakes live or die on flavour, and the coconut-tomato-spice sauce here does a lot of quiet work — cumin, smoked paprika, a whisper of cinnamon — while the couscous soaks it all up. Chicken breast keeps it lean and high in protein, the raisins add little bursts of sweetness against the spice, and the optional lentils sneak in extra protein and fibre. It’s the kind of dinner that tastes like it took effort. It didn’t.
Make it yours
Use whatever veg needs using up — zucchini, carrot, capsicum, all fair game · leave the raisins out if sweet-savoury isn’t your thing · add the lentils for a protein-and-fibre boost · a good squeeze of lemon at the end lifts the whole dish, so don’t skip it.
Is it dairy-free?
It is, happily — the creaminess comes entirely from coconut, no dairy anywhere. It’s gluten-free too if you swap the pearl couscous for a GF grain like rice or quinoa, since traditional pearl couscous is wheat-based. Easy tweak, same cosy result.