Ethiopian food is unique!
Ranked #2,400 in Food & Cooking, #47,805 overall
Welcome to our Ethiopian tour!
Let me introduce you!
We could spend hours talking about Ethiopian food. It's very tasty. Ethiopians are proud of their food, and gladly show you how to make it and how to eat it. How to eat it? Yes, they don't use fork and knife...But it's not just to dig in and start licking your fingers. First of all, only the right hand is used for eating. The left is used for drinking. You can never give food (or annything else, for that matter) with your left hand. It is considered rude. But we will come back to the art of eating.Picture by hetroclite
Doro Watt
Chicken Stew
- Serves: 6-8
- Prep Time: 1/2-1 hour
- Total Time: 5-6 hours
There is a rainbow of different foods in Ethiopia; Meat, vegetables, pulses- you name it! The national dish is chicken- doro wat. It is almost black in colour, full of onion and butter, and delicious. In Ethiopia, a dish is seldom served on its own. This is why the recipe will serve more people.
Ingredients
- 1 chicken-3 lbs -for good flavour use hen which requires longer cooking!
- 4 lbs onion
- 1 head garlic
- 3-4 tbsp Ethiopian butter
- 3-4 tbsp Berbere (Ethiopian Chili mixture)
Instructions
Chop the onions finely and put in a big pot. Chopping by hand is best, but you can also use a food-processor if you wish. Clay-pots give a nice flavour, but is not necessary. Let this slowly cook together, without any oil. Make sure it does not burn. The onion will become watery, and eventually shrink to a brown heap!
If you want to speed up the process, add a bit of salt to the onions. This will draw out the water quicker. If you use tender chicken instead of hen, it is also quicker. For an authentic doro watt, though, there are no short-cuts. It takes time!
(the recipe continues further down)
Picture by agezey
It might look like this
Fill a pot with chopped onion
As it cooks, it is reducing in size!
The water is coming out of the onions
The onions are changing colour
If using a food-processor to chop the onions: Quarter the onions and fill the bowl half full. Pulse a couple of times on high speed to get it going, then chop on low speed. This will prevent too much water from coming out of the onions!
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Keep it up!
The recipe continues!
Add a good measure of Ethiopian butter, start with a couple of big table spoons, and let it cook a little bit with the onions. (Look here for more information on ETHIOPIAN BUTTER).Then add a few table spoons of berbere, the Ethiopian chili mixture .Again, let it boil together. Often, a little water is needed so it doesn't burn.
Now it is time for finely chopped or minced garlic, let it all boil together...
This food is a bit like Indian curry, it needs to simmer for quite some time to bring out the flavour in the spices.
Adding butter and berbere
Adding the butter
Adding the berbere
The onion should have been cooked a bit longer, but color will darken some..
Time for the chicken
Now add the chicken which has been cut in smaller pieces. In Ethiopia it's cut in twelve pieces. A woman is not considered good material for marriage if she doesn't know how to cut a chicken! They also wash the chicken extensively with water and lemon.Add salt and let the chicken cook through. If available, add some "doro-wat-spice". The butter should be seen on the surface, this is a very rich dish. If needed, add more. Like so many other stews, it's best cooked a day in advance, so it can stand and "mature".
When all is finished, take it off the fire, let it cool a bit. Then, add a few hard-boiled, peeled eggs.
Most important- how to eat!
Injera is served with almost every meal in Ethiopia. This looks like a big pancake. The food is served on top of injera; first you eat the egg, and afterwards the meat. By hand. This is how it is done: Put some injera on your plate, covering the plate. Then add some of the sauce. Take a piece of injera in your hand and scoop it all up! The injera will protect your fingers from getting food on them. A good "injera-eater" will have clean fingers when finished.Picture by tifftodd
You eat with these
More injera is always served on the side, usually in small rolls.In this way you always have clean injera for the sauce, and don't need to eat the one under the food until you can see it.Traditionally people eat from the same plate, since the fingers are not supposed to touch your mouth it is actually quite ok. But many Ethiopians like to be modern and eat from their own plates, it is more common these days.
Doro wat is a "must" at weddings and other celebrations. It is ALWAYS there. But it's only one of many delicious dishes to be found in Ethiopia.
Some of the ingredients
An American version of doro wat!
Injera
Injera is made of a special flour, called teff, which has been fermented for about three days. This is fried on one side only, without oil, on a big slab made of clay. The mitads are quite big, about three feet in diameter. In other countries we normally use a frying-pan.Since injera is used with basically every meal, a lot is needed. One injera is a small portion for a man, many will eat one and a half. Read more about MAKING INJERA here!
Teff is a unique grain, used mainly in Ethiopia and Eritrea. It can also be found in the US now. It is a very small grain, rich in iron and fibre. There are different kind; white, black and red. These days many people have to mix teff with wheat-flour or maize, because of economic problems. But traditionally, injera is made from only teff.
Get picture of Woman Making Injera from Allposters
Meat Stew
Siga /Key Watt
- Serves: 4
- Prep Time: 1/2 hour
- Total Time: 2 hours
This is one of the more common meat dishes. Many don't use as much onion as stated here, then the watt will be a bit watery. Ethiopians also like to eat the meat with the fat still on it, I prefer to cut it away. This dish can be done with any kind of beef. If if it is not so tender- just boil it a bit longer. It is great even with lamb-meat, also with the bones.
Ingredients
- 2 lbs beef- cut in cubes
- 2 cups of onion- finely chopped
- 4-6 cloves of garlic- finely chopped or minced
- 1 tbsp ethiopian butter
- 1-2 tbsp berbere (ethiopan chili)
- 1 tsp salt
Instructions
Put the onion in a pot without oil and let them ''sweat'' out the water. Be careful they don't burn, stir frequently. When finished, they will have reduced a lot in volume and become brown in color. This usually takes about half an hour.
Add the butter (if you don't have butter, use oil or ghee), leave it boiling for about five minutes, then, add the berbere. Again, let it boil together for a few minutes before adding the meat. Add water if the sauce is too thick. When the meat has cooked for about ten minutes, add the garlic and salt. Now, it depends on the quality of meat how long time you need to cook it. When the meat is soft, the dish is ready!
Find out more about Ethiopia and its food
For an overview, check out my Ethiopian Collection!
Eat when the food is ready; speak when the time is right.
Ethiopian proverb
What about you?
You might need these
Tibs
Fried meat
- Serves: 2
- Prep Time: 10 min
- Total Time: 15-20 min
This is also a very popular dish, quick and easy. For a bigger party they will buy a sheep, slaughter it and fry it! There are big iron plates that you put over a wood-fire. The fat around the sheep's tail is used for greasing the pan! Here we will see how to do it in a normal kitchen!
Ingredients
- 1/2 kg tender meat- cut in small cubes
- 1 onion- chopped or slicedc
- 1 green chili pepper- chopped
- 1 tomato- cut in medium pieces (optional)
- 1 tsp Ethiopian butter
- 1-2 cloves of garlic (optional)
- oil for frying
Instructions
Season the meat with salt and pepper, a bit of rosemary is also good, put it to the side for a little while.
Heat a pan with a little oil. Put in the meat. The secret here is not to touch the meat until after a while, do not be quick to stir. You don't want the juice to come out of the meat!
When meat is half-done, add the onions and chili peppers. Let it all fry together until it starts looking well done. Then put in the tomato, a pinch of salt, the butter and mix it all up. Again it should fry together for a couple of minutes. This is so-called wet tibs, very juicy and tasty! Serve with injera or bread.
THANK YOU!
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Delicious!
Pictures of different food from Ethiopia
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Did you enjoy it?
Have you ever tried Ethiopian food?
Here, we have presented dishes that contain meat or chicken. For ETHIOPIAN VEGETARIAN FOOD- CLICK HERE!
Traditional Ethiopian Breakfast, Injera and Chickpeas
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SudokuNut
May 9, 2012 @ 6:08 pm | delete
- We have an Ethiopian restaurant here in town someplace which I've heard great things about. I'd love to try it.
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tabbygun
Apr 27, 2012 @ 1:42 pm | delete
- I had a school friend from Ethiopia, and we had some wonderful food at her house once, I think Injera and a curry of some sort. I'm glad I found this, I may try some of the recipes :)
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Ladymermaid
Mar 24, 2012 @ 2:59 pm | delete
- I have never tried Ethiopian food but like most things Ethiopian you have shown me that it is heavily laden in tradition. What a wonderful Ethiopian food recipe article.
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MelonyVaughan
Mar 2, 2012 @ 5:09 pm | delete
- Looks delicious! Would love to try it!
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Einar_A
Mar 2, 2012 @ 9:10 am | delete
- I found it very interesting learning about some of these Ethiopian foods! So many good things there that I would like to try.
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CruiseReady Feb 27, 2012 @ 7:23 am | delete
- Wow - it sounds like westerners travelling to Ethiopia would have a lot of acclimating to do, and reading up on proper food etiquitte beforehand would be a real must-do!
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WriterJanis
Feb 19, 2012 @ 4:45 am | delete
- I would like to try some of these recipes.
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akarki
Feb 16, 2012 @ 2:11 am | delete
- i am so pleased to read this great lens, pity i do not really have the ingredients, but will help myself with the american version.
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Tipi
Feb 2, 2012 @ 1:34 pm | delete
- Returning with a smile to sprinkle angel dust over your Ethiopian food recipes, this is just so wonderfully done to give the flavor of Ethiopia!
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Bobbeleh
Jan 25, 2012 @ 8:59 pm | delete
- One of the absolute BEST Ethiopian restaurants is Enssaro (www.enssaro.com) in Oakland. The injera is homemade and light and delicate. I never realized before how good or bad injera (and I have had both) can make or break a meal, but I was trying a new place some time ago -- the injera was thick and kind of tough and I recall thinking I should have gone to Enssaro.
My favorite Ethiopian dishes are kitfo and ata kilt, and I would love it if you could add a recipe for ata kilt to your lens!
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Louisa Dembul-Mujjen
by Mujjen
Long before moving to Ethiopia, I learned to love and cook the food. It is so delicious! Even though quite different from other food, it is not too difficult... more »
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Berbere, the queen of spice
Berbere Spice 2.0 oz by Zamouri Spices
Amazon Price: $4.89 (as of 05/31/2012)
Berbere is the main ingredient in Ethiopian cooking, a very tasty chili-mix!
Marcus Samuelsson goes back to his roots!
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Born Ethiopian, raised Swedish, and now one of New York City's top chefs!
Teff is not only for making injera
Bob's Red Mill Whole Grain Teff Flour, 24-Ounce Packages (Pack of 4)
Amazon Price: $28.45 (as of 05/31/2012)
