Chef Eden Gebre Egziabher returns to Epicurious for another edition of Passport Kitchen, today preparing Ethiopian-style Doro Tibs—an aromatic and intensely flavorful chicken and vegetable stir fry.
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00:00 So tibs is traditionally used to express
00:03 a high respect to someone else.
00:05 And it's currently one of the staple dishes
00:08 that is found in holidays and celebration
00:11 in Ethiopian cooking.
00:12 I'm Chef Erin Gobreg Ziab here,
00:14 born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
00:16 from Eritrean heritage.
00:18 Today I'll be cooking doro tibs,
00:21 which is chicken tibs with misir and tekel gomen.
00:26 (upbeat music)
00:29 (knife chopping)
00:31 To any type of Ethiopian Eritrean cooking,
00:34 onion is our best friend.
00:35 It goes in everything and it's lots and lots and lots of it.
00:39 Especially like when there's a celebration
00:41 that you have to cook a lot of onions.
00:44 Growing up, like my memory was the neighborhood ladies
00:48 gather up, one person or two or three
00:51 are in charge of just peeling onions.
00:53 And then the other group of ladies
00:55 are in charge of chopping up the onions.
00:58 Right here I have boneless, skinless chicken thighs.
01:02 Ethiopian Eritrean culture is heavily influenced
01:05 by the Christian culture.
01:07 And because of that, they fast half of the year
01:10 practicing Lent and abstaining from dairy and meat.
01:14 But when you do actually break fast,
01:16 everyone goes crazy for the meat dish.
01:19 I'm gonna add half of my onion, just a small amount.
01:22 I'm gonna use the other part of it into my cooking.
01:27 I'm gonna also do ginger, garlic paste, a small amount.
01:32 I think this should be enough
01:34 because we'll add more garlic when we're cooking it.
01:38 We'll add salt, a little bit of olive oil,
01:42 black pepper, ground cardamom.
01:45 And lastly, I'm gonna add my berbere.
01:52 So berbere is the gold currency of Ethiopian Eritrea.
01:57 It is the most important spice blend that we have.
02:01 We make it in large batches
02:02 and it's used for different types of dishes and cooking.
02:05 This is mostly made out of chili
02:09 as well as anywhere from eight to 12 different spices.
02:13 Each household makes their own
02:15 and they take full pride and joy in it.
02:17 We use it in almost everything.
02:19 While we're letting the chicken marinate,
02:21 I'm actually gonna make our kabe,
02:23 which we're gonna use to stir fry our chicken.
02:26 Clarified butter is pretty much removing the water
02:32 and the solid of the butter.
02:34 And so what you're left with is the butterfat,
02:37 which makes it great for sauteing.
02:39 In this clarified butter, we're gonna start with turmeric,
02:42 which adds that color that we're looking for.
02:45 We're gonna do black cumin.
02:46 This is called basobla, which is a sacred basil, dried.
02:50 We have white cumin, we have fenugreek, we have kosarit,
02:54 and the most important is the Ethiopian cardamom,
02:58 which is also called false cardamom.
03:00 I specifically use Ethiopian cardamom.
03:03 The flavor is very concentrated,
03:06 so you don't necessarily need a lot.
03:09 Then we're gonna do our fenugreek.
03:11 We wanna make sure we toast it
03:13 just until it turns slightly brown
03:17 and black and white cumin.
03:19 So this is all gonna go into spice grinder,
03:23 and we're gonna go straight into melting the butter.
03:26 We wanna make sure, it's very important
03:28 that we don't put it on high heat.
03:30 We want the butter to melt slowly,
03:32 as well as the spices to simmer slowly.
03:35 We're gonna seep all the spices and herbs in here,
03:39 lower the heat, and we're gonna simmer it
03:41 for a good 25 to 30 minutes.
03:44 This is perfect, and I'm gonna strain it.
03:47 You wanna make sure that the leafy herbs
03:50 are completely strained and they don't go into the butter.
03:53 And we'll put it in the fridge,
03:55 and we'll use it for our chicken tips.
03:58 The cast iron is on high heat,
04:04 so I'm gonna throw in my ebi that I just made.
04:08 It has solidified.
04:09 It's beautiful, colorful, golden yellow color.
04:12 That's what you want.
04:13 I use cast iron because this type of cooking
04:16 needs to be on very high heat.
04:18 Ibs is a fairly quick dish,
04:21 but we spend a lot of time building these flavors,
04:24 preparing the butter, simmering it, using other spices.
04:28 And so there's a lot of prep that goes behind it,
04:30 and you're building the flavor one layer at a time.
04:33 And so when it finally comes together,
04:35 when you're actually cooking it, that might be fairly quick.
04:38 That berbere and that chicken,
04:43 they're actually meant for each other.
04:45 So it smells very fragrant.
04:48 I'm smelling the berbere.
04:50 I'm smelling a little bit of the cardamom.
04:53 It looks beautiful.
04:56 All these ingredients that I have on the side,
04:58 we're adding it towards the end
05:00 so that as you're taking a bite of the chicken,
05:03 you're also tasting the crunchiness of the onion
05:06 and the scallion, and then the jalapeno is,
05:09 you want it to be as intact to its original texture.
05:14 (gentle music)
05:16 Ibs is served with a dipping sauce,
05:18 and the most traditional is the agaze sauce.
05:21 We're gonna take this beautiful red cherry color
05:25 of berbere, and I'm gonna do about
05:28 three or four tablespoons of that.
05:31 I'm gonna do a little bit of olive oil and salt to taste.
05:36 And then I have a little bit of red wine.
05:40 You want the consistency to be very thick.
05:44 I'm gonna add more.
05:45 Wine is typical in the sauce.
05:47 It could be red wine, it could be white wine,
05:49 it could be edge, which is the honey wine.
05:51 Honey wine is something that's very traditional
05:53 that we like, but we're gonna go with red wine for this one.
05:56 It gives it a little bit of the acidity.
05:58 (gentle music)
06:01 Whenever Ibs is served,
06:05 usually served with a vegetable, one or two.
06:07 And so misir being one of the most staple,
06:10 which is the lentil stew.
06:12 And one thing I really love about Ethiopian,
06:16 Eritrean cooking is that because most of the time,
06:20 people do not eat meat for majority of the year,
06:24 they wanna make sure that the vegetables are as flavorful.
06:27 So they're not cutting corners
06:29 and just steaming a whole bunch of vegetables
06:31 and then serving it.
06:32 So every single veggie dish has a lot of deep,
06:36 flavorful component to it.
06:38 There are different types of lentils,
06:40 but the one that we have for today
06:42 are the whole red lentils.
06:44 We wanna make sure that we wash them and there are no dirt.
06:47 So we wanna wash it until the water is completely clear.
06:50 We have our Dutch oven.
06:51 We're gonna put it on medium high
06:53 and we're not adding any oil.
06:55 We're gonna add the red onions and we're gonna let it sweat.
06:58 Meaning we're gonna let all that water evaporate.
07:02 We're just gonna leave the onion in here
07:05 and it's gonna do its thing.
07:06 This takes about 10 or so minutes.
07:08 It's gonna get nice golden brown.
07:10 It's gonna shrink in size
07:11 and that's gonna be the base of our Mesut Ovet.
07:14 Right about now, we will add our ginger garlic paste
07:19 as well as oil.
07:22 The ginger and garlic, it looks really good.
07:25 Just gonna add a little bit more oil.
07:29 So I'm gonna add a small amount of tomato paste.
07:33 The Ethiopians would say it's blasphemy
07:38 because tomato is not native to our cooking.
07:41 The Italians spend a little bit of time in Ethiopia,
07:45 which Ethiopia takes pride and joy in saying
07:47 that it's the country that has never been colonized.
07:50 But one of the culinary contribution
07:53 that the Italians kinda left is giving us the tomato.
07:56 And so we have taken that tomato and made it our own.
08:01 I like to add tomato paste.
08:02 I've reduced the heat a little bit.
08:04 I'm gonna add my berberine.
08:06 I'm gonna add my spices.
08:07 One thing you really wanna pay attention
08:09 is that you don't burn the berberine.
08:12 So you wanna make sure you're constantly mixing it
08:15 and you're constantly adding water
08:17 because you will choke if you don't.
08:20 I'm gonna add about three or four tablespoons.
08:25 If I taste it right now, all you're tasting is heat.
08:28 That's all you're tasting.
08:29 It's almost unpleasant.
08:31 But the beauty of berberine is as you're cooking it longer,
08:37 you're pulling out the warmth of the spices.
08:40 This dish, you wanna be able to see the lentils.
08:43 You're not stirring it too much
08:45 because then it will become more like a porridge.
08:47 You don't want it to decimate into the onion
08:51 and all the spices that it has going on.
08:53 You wanna cook the lentil with the sauce
08:57 and you wanna do it slowly because you wanna make sure
09:01 that all the flavor goes into the lentils.
09:04 Anything that involves stewing, the secret is low and slow.
09:09 Another side dish that we're gonna make is the kalgomen,
09:16 which is cabbage and turmeric, ginger, garlic sauce.
09:21 Even though when you think about Ethiopian,
09:23 Eritrean cooking, you might be familiar
09:27 with the spicy dishes, we also have a good amount of dishes
09:31 that are not spicy, but that are very packed with flavor.
09:36 And this is one of them.
09:37 So it's usually if you're eating something spicy,
09:40 it's served with something that's not spicy.
09:42 This particular dish, you can do cabbage with carrots.
09:46 You can also add potatoes.
09:48 So it could be cabbage, carrots, and potatoes,
09:50 or even sometimes they might skip out the cabbage
09:54 and then just go with the carrots and potato,
09:56 just kind of up to your preference.
09:57 We're gonna turn our pot into a medium high heat.
10:01 Gonna add our veggie oil.
10:05 You're not adding too much water into this.
10:07 You're gonna be a little bit generous with the oil,
10:11 especially when you are cooking the onion
10:12 and the carrots together.
10:14 When you're tasting the cabbage,
10:16 cabbage doesn't necessarily have a lot of flavor.
10:18 We're gonna add our favorite, garlic and ginger.
10:22 You want this dish to be garlic and ginger forward.
10:26 The carrots take slightly longer to cook.
10:30 So we're gonna throw that in first.
10:33 And we're gonna cook it halfway.
10:35 I'm gonna add in my turmeric.
10:38 The turmeric is gonna help
10:40 with that beautiful yellow color.
10:43 We're gonna add in salt.
10:47 It looks like it's ready.
10:51 It's halfway cooked through.
10:52 So we're gonna add in our cabbage.
10:55 The texture that you wanna get is,
10:58 of course, it's cooked down, but not completely soft.
11:01 It needs to have a slight crunch to it.
11:04 We're gonna let the cabbage wilt.
11:06 We'll come back in about five or so to check in.
11:09 The last step is to plate our chicken.
11:15 This is a traditional shakla dis, or shakla tibs.
11:18 That's perfect whenever you're cooking any type of tibs.
11:21 You're keeping it in this.
11:23 We're gonna turn it upside down.
11:25 I'm gonna put it in the stove for a few minutes,
11:28 let it get completely hot.
11:30 The clay will be able to hold it.
11:32 When it's ready, we're ready to plate our chicken tibs.
11:35 I usually just kind of sprinkle
11:38 a couple of droplets of water.
11:40 And if it sizzles, then that means it's ready.
11:42 So we're finally ready to plate our food.
11:46 First things first, with all the stews
11:48 and the tibs that we've been making,
11:50 everything has a base for us.
11:52 Injera is a sourdough, spongy, flat bread,
11:57 fairly similar to a sourdough.
11:59 It's fermented.
12:00 It is made out of teff, which is a grain,
12:04 the smallest grain, and it grows in Ethiopia.
12:07 We don't have rice.
12:09 We have injera bread,
12:10 and that's kind of like the foundation.
12:12 We use our hands as a utensil,
12:15 so I just broke it into separate, into two pieces.
12:18 Usually the meat goes in the middle.
12:20 I'm adding my tibs.
12:22 Here goes the nice turmeric cabbage,
12:27 and we're just gonna plate it around.
12:29 The one thing that I really, really love about our cuisine
12:34 is the amount of options that you have.
12:37 Cooking and eating is kind of like a mezze,
12:40 so I'm plating my lentils, the lentil stew,
12:45 and we always have some sort of green.
12:49 It's so perfect because the chicken tibs is buttery,
12:52 the lentil is spicy, this has turmeric and cabbage,
12:56 and then this is just a perfect finish.
12:59 And lastly, we have our awaze paste.
13:04 You're gonna put a little bit of here
13:06 and a little bit of there.
13:08 The only rule that we have as you eat this food,
13:12 most of the time you're eating it in communal,
13:15 so the big no-no is that you do not lick your fingers,
13:18 but that's about it.
13:20 I'm gonna take a little bit of the injera,
13:23 I'm gonna take a nice size.
13:25 I think I'm gonna start with the chicken tibs.
13:29 There we go.
13:30 I'm gonna dip it into the awaze,
13:32 and of course I want some lentils,
13:35 and then I think I'm gonna do some cabbage.
13:38 This is a nice bite size,
13:41 and I've been working hard, so this is gonna be good.
13:45 So good.
13:47 I taste immediately the awaze, that berberi thick paste.
13:51 I taste a little bit of the wine.
13:53 The lentil is so good, it goes in so well,
13:55 and I feel that heat and the cabbage cools your tongue down.
13:59 This is really good.
14:00 You'll continue to eat this injera
14:02 until it's completely done and go into a food coma.
14:05 (upbeat music)