Greek Chicken and Olive Bowl
Foil-packet chicken, powdered yogurt dressing, and olives over couscous. Camp souvlaki without skewers.
- calories
- 720
- weight
- 6 oz
- cal / oz
- 120
- protein
- 45 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 8 min
- total time
- 13 min
- water
- 300 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Lunch
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Backpacking
- Basecamp
- Car camping
- Canoe / raft
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Couscous | 3/4 cup | instant, not pearl |
|---|---|---|
| Foil-packet chicken | 5 oz | |
| Powdered whole-milk yogurt | 3 tbsp | Greek yogurt powder if you can find it |
| Freeze-dried feta or shelf-stable feta crumbles | 1 oz | |
| Kalamata olives | 2 tbsp | pitted, drained, in a small screw-top jar |
| Dried lemon peel and citric acid | 1 tsp | or half a real lemon if the trip is short |
| Dried oregano | 1 tsp | |
| Garlic powder | 1/2 tsp | |
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp | |
| Dried minced onion | 1 tbsp | |
| Salt and pepper | to taste |
Method
- Boil 300 ml of water. Pour about 200 ml over the couscous and dried onion in the pot, lid on, off heat. Five minutes.
- In your mug or a wide-mouth bottle, stir the yogurt powder into 3 tbsp of the remaining water. Add the lemon peel, citric acid, oregano, garlic powder, and a pinch of salt. It should be thick enough to sit on a spoon.
- Fluff the couscous with a fork. Fold in the chicken straight from the packet and the olive oil.
- Top with olives, feta, and the dressing. Pepper it and eat out of the pot.
The original is a baked yogurt-marinated chicken with a salad alongside, which is three refrigerated components and an oven. On trail it collapses into one pot: couscous carries the starch, a foil packet does the chicken, and the yogurt dressing gets rebuilt from powder at camp instead of being a marinade. Lemon and oregano are doing the identifying work, so keep them even if you drop something else.
Mix the dressing separately and thick. Yogurt powder stirred into a hot pot turns grainy and disappears into the couscous; a few tablespoons of cool water in a mug gives you something that stays a sauce. Olives and feta are the salt and fat here, which is why the seasoning list is otherwise short. Note the dietary tags: this has chicken and cheese, so only the nut-free claim holds.
Packing
Couscous, dried onion, and seasoning go in one bag. Yogurt powder and the lemon-peel mix ride in a separate small bag so they stay dry until camp. Olives in a jar, chicken in its packet.
Variations
- Skip the couscous and eat it as a wrap in two flour tortillas.
- Freeze-dried cucumber, rehydrated in the dressing, gets you closer to the salad.
- Swap chicken for a foil packet of tuna if you want it cheaper and faster.
https://www.bowlofdelicious.com/baked-lemon-chicken-souvlaki-and-salad-with-creamy-dressing