Couscous, Dry

One US cup of couscous, dry weighs 173.2 grams. Going the other way, 100 grams is about 0.58 cups.

Also called dry couscous, uncooked couscous, Moroccan couscous, Maghrebi couscous, semolina couscous.

Dry couscous packs at about 173 g per US cup. USDA and multiple producer labels agree within 8 percent, and both the fine Moroccan style and the larger Israeli pearl style fall within tolerance of the same figure despite their very different granule sizes.

Couscous is small steamed granules of rolled durum wheat semolina — a traditional North African and Maghrebi staple made by moistening semolina flour, rolling it between the palms into tiny beads, steaming the beads briefly, and drying them. The result is a dried granule that rehydrates in hot water in minutes, unlike the wheat berries or pasta shapes that share its base ingredient. Three forms are sold under the couscous name in US supermarkets. Moroccan (fine) couscous, roughly 1 mm granules, is the default in North American recipes and the form USDA's record covers. Israeli couscous (also called pearl couscous or ptitim), roughly 3 mm balls, sits alongside it on most supermarket shelves; it is technically a toasted extruded pasta rather than steam-rolled semolina, but sold as couscous. Lebanese couscous, called moghrabieh, is 5 to 6 mm and rarer in mass-market US retail.

Sources converge closely. USDA FoodData Central's Couscous, dry gives 183 g per metric cup, which works out to 173 g per US cup at a density of 0.732 g/mL. Bob's Red Mill Golden Couscous, a fine Moroccan-style product, labels a 1/3 cup dry serving as 62 g, extrapolating to 186 g per US cup at density 0.786 g/mL — within 8 percent of USDA and inside the 10 percent milled tolerance. Bob's Red Mill Natural Pearl Couscous labels 1/3 cup dry as 57 g (171 g per US cup, density 0.723 g/mL), essentially matching USDA. The fine and pearl forms have very different granule sizes but end up at similar cup weights because the larger pearl balls, while denser per particle, pack in a different geometric arrangement (larger voids between fewer particles) that compensates for the extra particle density. The net cup weight ends up within tolerance across both product identities.

King Arthur's Ingredient Weight Chart does not list couscous in any form. The chart is silent on this ingredient, so there is no correction opportunity; the site publishes what USDA and the producer labels already agree on.

Couscous cooks by absorption rather than boiling. Fine Moroccan couscous rehydrates in an equal volume of hot water in 5 minutes off the heat; pearl couscous simmers in about 1.25 volumes of liquid for 10 minutes. Cooked couscous nearly triples in volume from dry, so 1 cup dry (173 g) becomes roughly 2.5 to 3 cups cooked. For recipes calling for a cup of dry couscous, measuring by weight is more reliable than by volume because the fine granules compact under a scoop; the difference between a loosely spooned and a firmly packed cup can exceed 20 percent.

Couscous at 173 g per cup sits in the mid-range milled band alongside semolina flour (163 g/cup in this database, same base grain in a different processing state) and above masa harina (93 g/cup, treated with lime and much lighter). Its density above semolina flour reflects the compaction from the steam-and-dry process that produces the granules — each granule is denser than the loose flour it started from, and although the granules pack with air spaces between them, the net effect is a slightly heavier cup than plain semolina.