Spiced Chicken with Couscous Salad & Dill Sauce | Healthy 30 Minute Dinner Recipe

Looking for a healthy chicken dinner recipe that’s quick, easy, and full of flavour? This Spiced Chicken with Couscous Salad & Creamy Dill Sauce is the perfect 30-minute dinner. Juicy chicken tenderloins are coated in warming spices, served with light and fluffy couscous, fresh veggies, and finished with a creamy dill yoghurt sauce.

This recipe is:
✅ Easy to make – ready in under 30 minutes
✅ Healthy & wholesome – high in protein, balanced with veggies
✅ Perfect for weeknights – quick prep, big flavour
✅ Meal prep friendly – great for lunches or make-ahead dinners

✨ If you love Mediterranean inspired chicken recipes or need new weeknight dinner ideas, this recipe will become a favourite.

Full Recipe 👇

Spiced Chicken with Zingy Couscous Salad & Creamy Dill Sauce

Prep time: 20 mins
Cook time: 10 mins
Serves: 4

Ingredients
For the chicken:
8 chicken tenderloins
1 tablespoon Greek yoghurt
1 tablespoon each ground cinnamon, ground cumin & ground sweet paprika
Sea salt & cracked black pepper

For the couscous salad:
1.5 cups cous cous
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 Lebanese cucumber, thin half moons
1/2 small red onion, finely sliced
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1 handful mint leaves, chopped
1 tablespoon sumac
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 lemon, zest & juice

For the creamy dill sauce:
3 tablespoon Greek yoghurt
2 tablespoon mayonnaise
2 tablespoon gherkin/pickle juice
2 tablespoon fresh dill, chopped
Sea salt & cracked black pepper

Method:
1. Marinate the Chicken: In a bowl, mix Greek yogurt, harissa seasoning, lemon juice and brown sugar (if using). Add chicken tenderloins and coat well. Let marinate for 10 minutes.

2. Place couscous in a bowl, pour over 1.75 cups of boiling water, cover, and let sit for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork.

3. Combine the cucumber, red onion, radish, tomatoes, mint in a small bowl. Season well with salt, add lemon zest, squeeze over the lemon juice and sprinkle in the sumac. Gently toss.

4. In a small bowl, combine Greek yogurt, mayonnaise, gherkin juice, dill, salt, and pepper. Stir until smooth.

5. Heat a pan over medium-high heat and cook the marinated chicken tenderloins for 3-4 minutes on each side until fully cooked and golden.

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Today I’m going to be making a lightning fast weekn night meal. It is a great one when you know you’ve got a frantic week or when you don’t have a frantic week cuz it’s just so delicious. But it is my spiced chicken with a zingy couscous salad and then it’s got a creamy dill sauce on top. It’s best enjoyed all year round, but it is really yummy in the warmer months. I love it during the summertime cuz it feels really vibrant and fresh and it’s full of wholesome goodies, which we love. So, we’re going to start with marinating the chicken. So, I’ve got some chicken tenderloins here. I love using a chicken tenderloin. They’re easy to cook. They’re even to cook and um like their name suggests, they are always tender, which is really great. But, um if you can’t get your hands on tenderloins, um they’re slightly more expensive than other cuts of chicken. So, if you’d prefer not to use them, chicken thighs or chicken breasts work just as well with this recipe. So, I’ve got a couple of spices here. So, I’ve got some ground cinnamon, some ground cumin, and then also some sweet paprika. I can mix those up first, and then just pour that. We’re going to be using our hands to mix it all up in a minute, so it’s fine if it’s sort of uneven. About a tablespoon of Greek yogurt. Usually, I would do this in a bowl, and then it’s easy to mix it up, but I just wanted you to be able to see it. And then we’ve got some fresh lemon juice. You’re going to squeeze that over the chicken as well. Beautiful. And then I’m just going to season it with some salt and pepper. Lost my pepper and pepper on that. Now, the fun, but also kind of messy part. I’m going to mix all of this. And as I said, it’s probably best done in a bowl because this is likely going to go everywhere. I’m going to take my rings off so I don’t have natural yogurt stuffed in them for weeks. But basically, we’re going to mix it all up. Fun but messy. I usually love doing this messy kind of stuff with my daughters, but particularly my middle daughter cuz she loves cooking because she’s that little bit young. She’s sort of three and a half, nearly four. She would do this and find it really fun, but then she’d probably stick her fingers in her mouth. And obviously, we’re dealing with raw chicken, so not the best idea. There we are. Doesn’t look very pretty, but that’s our tenderloins marinating away in that the Greek yogurt that goes into the marinade is going to help to tenderize the meat even more. So, we can leave that aside while we prepare our other parts of the dish. I feel like couscous is a really underrated grain. Basically, it’s like a tiny teeny pasta. It is wheat and it takes seconds to cook. Literally, we’re going to put some boiling water over this, let it stand for about 5 minutes, fluff it, and it’s going to be ready to go. So, you know, when you get to those wheat nights when you think, “Oh, what am I going to cook?” Couscous is always a great answer. To prepare your couscous, you’re basically pouring it in a nice wide bowl because it helps it cook more evenly. So, you’re pouring your couscous into there. I like to put a little bit of olive oil just to help a little squeeze over the top. I also like to do a pinch of salt. And then you’re just adding your boiling water over the couscous. Getting it all underneath. That’s awesome. Then you can either put a plate on top or I like to glad wrap it. And you’re going to pop it off to the side for about 5 to 10 minutes. Nice and tight. Let that heat stay in. And that’s it. So, we’re just going to pop it over there. Wait for that to be ready. Now, we’re going to get on to cooking our chicken. Um, so I’m going to start medium to large fry pan. We’re going to get that nice and hot. And then we’re going to pop a little bit of oil into our pan. Let that heat. A little tip always if you’re adding olive oil or any type of oil to a pan before you put in whether it’s your meat, your protein, your veggies, whatever you’re cooking, let that oil heat up first. It will help the cooking process so much more. Okay, I can feel now that that’s getting nice and hot, which is what we like. And then I’m just going to add the tenderloins into the hot pan. So, you should hear a nice sizzle once they go in. That means you’re going to get a nice coating. It’s going to caramelize well on the outside. Beautiful. One more and then we’ll do another one just so you get the idea. So, sizzle, sizzle. We like to hear that when it goes in the oil. As I said, it means it’s going to color it nicely. Just make sure you move it around a little bit so they’re not sticking right from the beginning. Otherwise, you might have a bit of a problem trying to get them to turn. Keep it high for first minute or so to give that really nice coating. And then we’re going to turn it down so that the tenderloins cook. And then we’ll flip them and do the same thing. Okay, so they’ve had about 3 or 4 minutes on one side and we’re just going to check. They’re a nice golden color. We’re going to turn those now. There you can see that they’ve colored beautifully. They’ve got a nice golden crust. Because we’ve turned it over, we’re going to turn it back up again so that it gets that nice golden color on the outside. And then we’ll turn it down again just to finish off the cooking. Okay, so we’re going to check our couscous. So that’s been about 5 to 10 minutes. Anywhere between there is fine. We’re going to pull off the plastic. Basically, you should just be able to run a fork through it and it all just breaks up beautifully like that. And couscous kind of makes So that was one cup of couscous. It makes quite a lot. Super affordable. Great to have as, you know, a bed to whatever dinner you’re having. The bulk of the dinner. Works really beautiful. So, look at that. 5 minutes and you’ve got your grain ready. I’m just going to pop that there. Then, I just want to make up a little fresh component um to go with our dinner. So, I’ve just got some cucumber half moons here. Nice and thin. And then probably my favorite combination, you would see me use cucumber and cherry tomatoes a lot. I just feel like for me, they’re something I’ve always got in my fridge and cupboard. They’re a staple. They’re affordable. Most of the time, kids like them. I’m not going to say every time, but my girls have always loved cucumber, and they go through stages with tomato, but most of the time they do like it, which is a win. I’ve got some Spanish onion here. I love um the sort of flavor and texture that Spanish onion gives, but if you are making this for kids, you can always leave it out. And then I’ve got some fresh mint. You can use any herb you like here. I love mint, but mint, coriander, dill, parsley, all work really well. We’re going to drizzle over some olive oil and some fresh lemon juice. Yum. A really zingy fresh component to the dish. Now, sumac is a spice that I really, really love to use. It’s used in Middle Eastern cooking a lot. It’s not a strong strong offensive flavor by any means. It just adds a beautiful kind of layer of depth and difference, I think, to a fresh salad like this rather than, you know, your normal bottled Italian dressing or whatever. This is just that little bit different. And, yeah, the flavor of the spice is slightly different. So, it’ll just jazz up your weekn night meals. And then I’m just going to grab a fork and basically we’re going to give that all a lovely toss. And the sumac that’s in this goes really well with the spices that we’ve used on our chicken. So your cumin, your cinnamon, um your paprika, that kind of thing. And then a good pinch of salt. Really good pinch of salt to bring out those spices and also the flavors of the veggies in this. We’ve got our couscous here. We’ve got our really fresh, yummy salad ready to go. If you wanted, you could mix that through all of that and then serve it out to your bowls. I’m going to keep it separate for now. I’m going to make a dill a creamy dill sauce. Now, this is optional. If you’ve got the time or you want to go to the effort, this very easy Greek yogurt dill sauce is really, really yummy to drizzle over the top. So, grab a um Sorry, it’s got water in it. Grab a jug. We’re going to start with Greek yogurt. One of my favorite ingredients of all time. It’s so versatile, so amazing, so good for you. We’re going to add a tablespoon of mayonnaise. You can skip that if you are trying to stay very healthy and you don’t want to have the mayo. The Greek yogurt also works beautifully. Then this one’s a little bit random and also optional, but a tablespoon or so of like pickle juice or if any of you guys have Cornish shons or pickles or sort of these larger cucumbers in your fridge at home, a little bit of that juice, a vinegary kind of juice, an acidic liquid really makes this sauce pop. So, I’m adding the dill. Again, some people say to me, Sarah, I don’t want to go out and buy two herbs for a weekn night meal. So here I’ve used mint and dill. I’ve got mint in my garden, so that’s easy for me. If you wanted, you could you could use mint in both the sauce and your salad, or you could use dill in your sauce and also your salad. But in my case, I’m using both. And then really good pinch of salt and really good crack of pepper. And then we’re going to mix all that up. And our dish is ready to go pretty much. So give it a good mix. This dill sauce is so good with so many things. You could just use it as a dip. It’s really wonderful. You can drizzle it over any meats, barbecued meats, things like that. It’s a really versatile sauce in burgers. You can have it in any type of meat burger. Let me just check. Yum, yum, yum. Actually, going to throw a little bit more dill in there cuz I love dill. All right, stir that up. And that is ready to go. M. And you just get that acidity. It’s a little bit like a Big Mac sauce actually, but you just get that acidity from the pickle juice that sort of hits the back of your mouth and is really good drizzled on this dinner. And now we’re going to plate up. What I love about it is I can get it on the table in under 20 minutes. But if you are having friends over as well, it’s also a wonderful dish to serve because you can make your salad nice and early. Just hold off on the um olive oil and the lemon juice until last minute. You can have your couscous all ready to go. You can have your sauce all made and your chicken marinated and then you’re just cooking up your chicken last sort of minute. We’re just going to put some of the couscous into your bowl. As much or as little as you like. So, you’ve got your couscous in there and then you’ve got your fresh zingy salad. I love a fresh component of a dish. Kind of just brings all the flavors together. And then when you finished it, you just feel lighter, healthier, and it’s no surprise that you do because it’s all full of goodies, and that’s the main point. And then we’ve got our chicken here that’s just finished in the pan. So, I’m going to pop that into the bowl. Beautiful chicken tenderloins. Lovely. And then I’ve got our yummy dill sauce. And just drizzle that over any way you want. Drizzle. Whoops. I’ve got it everywhere there. That’s all right. It still tastes the same. Lovely. Then I can put a little bit of the freshness on top. Just so you see the lovely, beautiful, vibrant colors. Okay, and there it is. Now, the best part, you got to try. Cut your chicken. Got your couscous underneath and then your yummy fresh salad. Get a little bit more freshness on there. I always tend to make a way too big a mouthful. Hold on. Let’s go again. All right, here we go. Wow. Could have that every night of the week. It is just really, really fresh. Delicious, affordable. For a weekn night meal, it’s perfect because it can be on the table in 20 minutes. It’s full of flavors. It’s filling enough to fill you up to let you go for the night. Full of healthiness. I just love it. Love, love, love. You’ve got to try this one. You’re going to really, really enjoy it. Delicious.