Ethiopian Spicy Chicken Stew: Doro Wat

I saw this dish made on television about 25 years ago, but I don't recall the television program. About a year ago I saw it made online by an Ethiopian woman and I decided I wanted to try making this myself (I've now made it three times in the last year). I checked probably 25 recipes, and there were naturally some variations, as this is a popular dish in East Africa, and like with just about all popular dishes, many people have their own versions, but generally the differences weren't all that great. The common similarity was the use of a lot of onion, although some chopped the onion finely by hand, others chopped the onion into more medium sized pieces and others used food processors to grind the onions into a fine texture, which is what I did the third time I made this dish (see photo below), and I recommend that you also use a food processor, it makes it all much easier. What makes this dish is the spice mix, called "berbere." You can read my note below, and if you make it yourself, you can control the "heat," or you can buy some and then "doctor" it more to your own preferences, especially if you like more heat. I bought some berbere, and it was far too mild, but I dry and grind my own hot chilies, so I easily remedied the "heat shortage." I keep two kinds of ground red chilies; one "hot," but not scorching, and a second type that is much hotter. As is almost always the case here, this is my version of "doro wat," which means "chicken stew," but it's certainly similar to many of the recipes I checked, including one I have in a cookbook I've had for over 20 years. Ah... I don't care for the recipe in the cookbook. While I mentioned that "doro wat" is a popular dish in East Africa, it is not typically served on a regular basis in most households, as it is more of a holiday dish or used for family celebrations, although restaurants catering to tourists are likely to have it on the menu. You can serve this with rice, but traditionally it is served with "injera," a crepe like flatbread common in East Africa. Injera is used to line serving plates and trays, just like you might line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and then various foods are served right on top of the injera. Then pieces of the injera are torn off, beginning at the edges, and used by diners to scoop up or pinch off foods from the injera covered plate/tray.*

You could certainly use a slow cooker to prepare this dish, but I cooked it in a pot over low heat on the stove top. The first time I made this, I used bone-in chicken pieces, although I had seen several recipes that used boneless chicken; so the second time I made it, I used boneless chicken. The third time I compromised between the two and I used bone-in whole chicken legs, but boneless chicken breast. The problem is, if you keep the bones in, when you serve the chicken, you have to be careful of pieces of bone that have come off into the stew. To be honest, it's better to use boneless chicken, BUT I put some of the removed skin into the stew for added flavor. If you keep the skin in big pieces, you can fish it out later.  

I believe I wrote about this in one of my articles about Germany some time back, since that's where it happened, but it is certainly relevant here. I met my first Ethiopian in Germany back when the country was still divided. When I say "Ethiopian," I mean a person born and raised there. I was returning from Berlin to Frankfurt by train, and a young man from Ethiopia was in my compartment. The political situation was somewhat tense, as there were periodic flare ups in those days between East and West Germany and their respective allies, with the United States then leading the support for West Germany, and the Soviet Union leading the support for East Germany, a then communist dominated country. At that time in particular the tensions were higher than normal, because an East German spy or two had been discovered in the West German government or military, I just forget the details. Read this carefully, because it is a bit hard to follow here. The Ethiopian man was young, and if I remember correctly, he had been, or perhaps still was, a student in the Soviet Union, in Moscow. In those times, Ethiopia had a pro-Soviet government, and this young man had a Soviet passport. The only reason I knew anything about him was that he was fluent in French and a young German man from the Württemberg region of Germany was quite good with French and he translated for us (there was also a middle aged German couple in the compartment), and also for the guards and train personnel who periodically entered the compartment. So, if you are confused, you have undoubtedly followed the story well: Ethiopian man, Soviet passport, speaks French, traveling in West Germany; hey, what's so unusual about all of that? Well, later the West German guards got on the train at the border between the two Germanies and when they saw the Ethiopian man's Soviet passport, they examined everything the man had on him, including his toothbrush. I distinctly remember that, even after all of these years. I felt so sorry for him, but it was a sign of those times.

Ingredients (6 servings):

3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken pieces (or about 4 pounds skinless chicken pieces with bones)
3 large onions (softball size), chopped or put into a food processor
4 tablespoons butter (or clarified butter, or spiced clarified butter**)
1/3 cup berbere spice mix***
2 inch piece of ginger, peeled and finely chopped/minced
3 garlic cloves, minced 
4 tablespoons tomato paste
3/4 cup chicken stock (you can add a little more, if needed)
1 teaspoon salt (if the chicken broth is salty, you can omit this)
6 eggs (hard boiled and peeled)
1/2 lemon, juiced
2 inch x 1/2 inch piece of fresh lemon peel

You will need a good sized pot to make this dish. Peel the onions and chop them, but it is easier, including on the eyes, to cut the onions into fairly large pieces and put them into a food processor and process until the onions are finely ground. Onions have a lot of liquid, so don't be surprised if you see the processed onions with "puddles" of onion juice on them (see photo below). I also add the garlic and the ginger to the processor and just do this all together. In the pot over low heat, add the butter and oil (or clarified butter), after a minute or two, add the ground onion/garlic/ginger mixture and cook the mixture, uncovered, for about 30 minutes. Add the berbere spice mix, tomato paste, lemon peel and chicken broth; stir well and cook for another 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure the tomato paste breaks up and blends into the mixture. Add the chicken making sure that all pieces are submerged in the sauce, or at least coated with the sauce. This is another argument to use boneless chicken pieces, because if you use bone-in chicken and you want to move it around a bit during cooking, this can cause pieces of bone to fall off into the stew. Let the chicken cook, covered, over low heat until tender. Add the lemon juice, and then nestle the hardboiled eggs into the pot and let the stew cook for about 8-10 more minutes.  

* You can make your own injera bread and it's pretty easy: https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2019/04/east-african-flatbread-injera.html

** Ethiopians use a clarified butter that is made with other ingredients to spice it up. Clarified butter has had the milk solids removed and this allows it to cook at higher temperatures or for longer periods of time without burning. The Ethiopian version is called "niter kibbeh/nitr qibe," and you can find it in some spice shops or in African grocery shops, or online. It depends upon how "authentic" you want to try to be, but you certainly can use 4 tablespoons of butter and add a pinch each of some, or all, of the following: ground cinnamon, ground cardamom, ground cloves, ground coriander, ground cumin, ground fenugreek. If you don't want to get this involved, just use 3 tablespoons of butter and 1 tablespoon of regular olive oil or vegetable oil. The oil will "help" to keep the butter from burning quickly.

*** Berbere spice mix can be found in some spice shops, African grocery shops or online. If you keep a large variety of spices at home, you can also simply make your own berbere. While the butter used is not quite as important, this spice mix is very important to make "Doro Wat." To make your own berbere spice mixture, here is my own recipe, but remember, many East Africans have their own recipes: https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2019/04/east-african-spice-mix-berbere.html
    
1) "Doro Wat" with whole piece of chicken  2 & 3) Longer cooked "Doro Wat" with off the bone chicken  4) The onions for the stew in the pot, and you can see the onion juice on top   (Note: a boiled egg and some collard greens accompany some servings) 

WORD HISTORY: 
Skip-English has more than one word of this spelling, with one simply being a shortened form of "skipper" ("a ship's captain or commander"). Then there is "skip" meaning "basket, trash bin," in  British English, a variant form of "skep," which was borrowed from Old Norse "skeppa" (basket), but with an unknown further history. Then there is the most common word of this spelling, meaning, "to hop along between a walk and a run," also, "to jump over." This led to figurative usages like, "to leave out, as in 'to ignore a part of written text or music" (for example, "I'm busy, so I'll skip reading the middle part of the article and go to the end"), and also of people, often coupled with "over," as in, "Actually Johnny is next in line, but I'll "skip over" him, because I prefer the next person"; then later also, "to deliberately fail to attend some function or event" (for example, "I'm so tired, I think I'll skip going to the council meeting tonight"). This is all from North Germanic "skupan," meaning, "to hop, to leap," and English likely borrowed the word from some form brought to England by Old Norse, which had "skopa," meaning, "to make a run, to leap." English borrowed the word, as "skyppen," in the early 1300s. It then became "skippen," before the modern version. The noun form was derived from the verb in about 1450, initially meaning, "a bound, a short hop," but then it later also followed the figurative meanings of the verb, "a leaving out  or ignoring of something," and a common usage in the prominent days of vinyl records was, "a defect or scratch in the record causing it to "jump" out of sequence."