Lamb Biryani
Tejal Rao
1653 ratings with an average rating of 4 out of 5 stars
1,653
4 1/2 hours, plus overnight marinating
Doro Wat (Ethiopian-Style Spicy Chicken)
- Total Time
- 1 hour
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
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Ingredients
Yield:4 to 6 servings
- 8 to 10boneless, skinless chicken thighs
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 1tablespoon white vinegar
- 4 to 5large onions, peeled and quartered
- Fresh ginger (1-inch piece), peeled and grated
- ½head of garlic, peeled
- ⅓cup olive oil
- 1 to 2tablespoons hot chile powder like cayenne
- 1tablespoon sweet paprika
- ½teaspoon ground ginger
- ½teaspoon ground coriander
- 1teaspoon ground cardamom
- ¼teaspoon dried thyme
- ¼teaspoon ground fenugreek
- ¾teaspoon salt or to taste
- Pinch of freshly ground black pepper
- Injera, pita, naan or rice, for serving
- Hard-boiled eggs, for serving (optional)
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Nutritional analysis per serving (6 servings)
474 calories; 23 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 12 grams monounsaturated fat; 4 grams polyunsaturated fat; 22 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams dietary fiber; 6 grams sugars; 46 grams protein; 558 milligrams sodium
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
Powered byPreparation
- Step 1
Heat the oven to 350 degrees and rub the chicken with the lemon juice and vinegar.
- Step 2
Put the chicken in a rimmed baking sheet and bake, discarding the juices after 20 minutes, then draining again after 10 more minutes. Remove meat from oven and set aside.
- Step 3
As the chicken cooks, put the onions, ginger and garlic in a food processor with a steel blade and finely chop until almost ground, leaving a bit of texture.
- Step 4
Heat oil in a deep skillet over medium heat. Add the onion mixture and simmer, stirring frequently, about 20 minutes or until the onions have turned golden. Then stir in 1 tablespoon of the chile powder, the sweet paprika, ginger, coriander, cardamom, thyme, fenugreek, salt and pepper.
- Step 5
Cook for a few minutes, taste the sauce, and if you prefer more bite, add more chile. Add the chicken and simmer, covered, for about 15 more minutes, adding as much as a cup of water to reach the consistency of a thick sauce. Add more salt and pepper, if desired.
- Step 6
Serve with injera, pita, naan or rice and, if you wish, hard-boiled eggs.
Private Notes
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Cooking Notes
Sandy
Why not reserve the drippings for the sauce?
Joan Nathan
Sandy, What a great idea! Meskerem does not do this but when I shared your comment with her, she replied it would add more flavor to the dish if it were used instead of some of the water.
Patrice
Try straining the onion juice before cooking the onions in oil. Processing the onions creates a lot of juice.They really won't brown because you're basically boiling them in their own juice. I reserve the onion juice, mix it with the lemon juice and vinegar (i use plum vinegar), marinate the chicken in that for 30 min then I brown the chicken in a pan and set it aside until my onions are golden and the spices are mixed in with them.
Joan Nathan
Use about 2 Tablesoons plus 1 teaspoon cardamom and the fresh ginger. Add more as needed.
DeborahS
I made this in college with an Amharic Ethiopian whom I was dating. At the time we could not find teff with which to make injera. We used rye bread. It was authentic, so too hot and spicy for our white liberal arts college mates in Putney Vermont, but the black students ate it with tears in our eyes and throats constricting, because it was made by a brother from the motherland and we loved him.
Betty
Rather than pulling the chicken from the oven to drain the drippings before finishing the bake (and draining again), why not just bake the thighs on a rack in that rimmed baking sheet? Then you can use some or all of the drippings (or none) without losing heat when you open the oven at the 2/3 point.
Ed
I have not made this recipe but have found in recipes with similar procedures that reserving the juices from thighs results in a greasy sauce if the juices are not well skimmed of fat. The recipe creator probably thinks it is not worth the effort given the small amount of fat-skimmed juice that results. That's my guess.
wg owen
MUCH simpler and superior flavor: get some berbere (the spice mixture) from an East African market if in a city or on-line. And just chop the onions. Ethopians add tomato or tomato paste as well - deepens the flavor. Simple flat bread (Teff injera is wonderful, but an effort): add hot water 1:1 to flour with some leavening and make plate-sized thin crepes in a non-stick skillet. Do not turn, just cook until top is set and dry.
Heisa Papor
When I lived in Ethiopia the only kind of onion I ever saw was shallots, so maybe that would make a difference in how the onion/ginger/garlic mixture behaves. Also if you use a little tomato paste be sure to cook it with the spices to round out the flavor. It would be fine, even more authentic, to cook doro wat the day before you plan to serve it. The skies above Addis Ababa used to be heavy with the smoke of charcoal fires from making doro wat the day before Christmas and Easter.
Lindsey
I have had this with pumpkin and sweet potato instead of chicken. The version my Ethiopian friends make has tomato paste in the sauce as well as the spices. The spice mix is called "dukkos" and some African grocery stores sell it.
Heidi
Based on some comments, I used the drippings instead of water. And I added tomato paste. While the dish was very good, it was a bit greasy. Next time I would just use water.
D Walker
It would have been very helpful to have the onion amount listed in approximate cups, rather than just approximate onions. An inexperienced cook, I bought what I thought were large onions. In hindsight they were huge onions, and it took some two hours to turn the vast onion mixture golden over a medium heat. It also knocked the entire recipe off balance, and I wasn’t confident enough to make adjustments. In the end, the chicken was good after discarding 90 percent of the onions mash.
Lindsey
Berbere is the word for chille. My Ethiopian friends make a spice mix called "dukos". It goes into most things, and in an emergency it can be spread on bread or injera for a snack.
Joan Nathan
Cook about 10 minutes more or until done. Remember that it will be cooked in the sauce too.
lisac
I make this often with berbere spice from Savory Spice shop. I use fresh ginger and garlic. I just put the thighs in the sauce and braise them for 45 minutes. My favorite part is the eggs. I make extra eggs for leftovers.
Summer
The flavors were very potent here. I definitely recommend scaling back chili powder to begin with. I needed to add a sprinkle of sugar and baking soda to the onions and cover and let caramelize for 40 minutes - I saw the green tinge but it turned out fine after this. I salted the chicken with the rub as well. The end sauce is definitely flavorful enough without marinating the chicken I think. Took some tweaks but liked it.
Elizabeth
Followed the recipe to the letter and while I may make it again, something was missing. Not sure what, but the flavours were not what I've tasted when eating other Doro Wat. Will keep experimenting and trying...not giving up!
Stef Morgan
Gosh. Don't throw away the best part! Save the chicken cooking juices to fry the onions/spices in. Cook them down a bit first so there's more liquid schmaltz than plasma.
queensgrl
If using Berbere instead of individual spices, how much should be used?
Karen Johnston
I’m making this for a dinner party and just learned one guest is vegetarian. Would it work to use tofu in lieu of chicken for 1 serving?
Carolyn
Like other reviews, this was a miss. The onion-ginger-garlic mixture should likely be drained first in order to properly brown it. Mine turned blue like other reviewers but eventually browned after a long time. The final result had a very bitter flavor and I ended adding sone sugar to mask the harshness of the dish. Will not make again.
Janet
I would roast the thighs on a rack set in a sheet pan for about 25 minutes and transfer them to a plate. Then I'd drain the drippings into a fat separator. I'd rather wash the rack (in the dw) than try to drain a very hot sheet pan twice. Any juices on the plate can then be added to those from the fat separator, then into the sauce. I love doro wat (even if autocorrect doesn't).
Patrick
If using berbere from a market, how much should one use? Also, how is it pronounced?
Kevin Kruger
BUR-bur-ree. Use 2-3 teaspoons.
Y
While making this for Hanukkah yesterday, my ginger-onion-garlic blend mixture turned a light BLUE when I began sauteing it. Apparently it's not unheard of and is the result of some reaction between the onion's acids and either the ginger or garlic, and is safe to eat, but I was mighty concerned. Thankfully adding tomato paste (referring to people's notes) and a Berbere spice mix brought it back to its intended color, but man, that was a moment of cold sweat. Delicious, though!
Rebecca
Wish I had read the other comments and looked this up ahead of time - onions and garlic became green/extremely bitter after putting them in the food processor, which is apparently common since they release enzymes if you prepare them that way. Dish was inedible as a result...
Dennis
Not sure what I did wrong, but the sauce was so bitter as to be inedible. My guess is that I had too much ginger? Disappointed, but I’ll give it another try!
Sarah
Similar to other folks - my onion mix turned green and it tasted like raw onions even after 30+ minutes of cooking. If I had to do it over again, I would cut up the onion, garlic, and ginger vs. putting it through the food processor. I think that's what did this dish in.
David
I cut up the boneless skinless thighs into bite size pieces and marinated them in the lemon/vinegar for a few hours. Based on others’ comments, I sautéed the onion mixture for 40 minutes. Using the “1 large onion = 3 cups” conversion, I ended up using 12 cups of quartered onions. Am not a fan of HOT so used mild chili powder instead of cayenne. Made this with Mark Bittman’s injera and found an Ethiopian kale side dish that complemented this really well. A winner!!
JT
Another vote for this recipe being a little off-kilter. 20 minutes for the onions is nowhere near enough, it also would have been helpful to hear what type of onions. I elected to go with 5 and had sweet and I felt that the flavor was significantly off from when I get this at restaurants. I love onion, but in the future would go down to four and maybe white to see if that fixed the flavor. Agree with a comment down a ways that draining the onions would probably have helped a lot
Chester From Chalifornia
Made as described except halved it, used the drippings in the sauce and lacked cardamom. Pretty tasty! A strange bitter note I tried to mitigate with a streak of honey, which I think worked pretty well. In terms of process, next time I would brown the chicken, set aside, caramelize the onion mixture, spice bomb it, then finish the chicken in a simmer. Similar to how I've made Satsivi (Georgian walnut chicken dish - amazing)
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