Doro wat

Ingredients

• Chicken, jointed1.4 kg
• Onions — very finely chopped1 kg
• Berbere3 tbsp
• Niter kibbeh spiced butter120 g
• Garlic6 clove
• Ginger40 g
• Eggs — hard-boiled6
• Lemon1
• Red wine or tej120 ml
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Marinate the chicken in lemon juice and salt for half an hour.

   30 min

2. 2

   Cook the onion in a dry pot over medium heat for forty minutes, stirring. It weeps, reduces and turns into a dark paste. Add neither oil nor water.

   40 min

3. 3

   Add the spiced butter, garlic and ginger, cook five minutes, then stir in the berbere and fry five more: the spices have to open in the fat.

   12 min

4. 4

   Pour in the wine and a cup of water, add the chicken and braise covered for forty minutes over a low flame.

   40 min

5. 5

   Score the boiled eggs in several places and slip them into the sauce for the last ten minutes.

   12 min

6. 6

   Serve with injera. The sauce should be thick and dark red, with oil separated on top.

About the dish

The onion is cooked dry — no oil, no water — for forty minutes. It gives up its own moisture, reduces and turns to a paste, and only then does fat go in. It is the longest and the most important step.

Berbere is an Ethiopian blend of chilli, fenugreek, coriander, ginger and a dozen more spices. It goes in generously, two or three spoons, and is fried in the fat, or a powdery taste remains.

The eggs are scored before they go in. The sauce travels into the cuts and colours the white — not a decorative trick but a way of seasoning them from inside.

Worth knowing

• — A kilo of onion to a kilo and a half of chicken is not a typo. The onion is the substance of the sauce, not a seasoning.
• — Niter kibbeh can be replaced by clarified butter warmed ten minutes with cardamom, cinnamon and cloves and then strained.
• — The sauce should end up thick enough to lift with bread. If it is loose, the onion was not reduced far enough.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

620 kcal

Protein

46 g

Fat

40 g

Carbs

18 g

More from Ethiopia

• Misir wat — Red lentils in a berbere sauce. A fasting dish eaten in Ethiopia on fast days all year round.