Ingredient

Berbere

Berbere is the central spice blend of Ethiopian and Eritrean cooking — chilli-red, warm, complex and only moderately hot. Calling it a chilli powder is the mistake: the chilli is the base, and what makes it berbere is the dozen aromatics layered over it.

What goes into it

Blends vary by family and region, and this is the common ground.

• Dried chilli, the base and the colour. Often a mild-to-moderate Ethiopian variety rather than anything fierce.
• Fenugreek, which gives berbere much of its distinctive savoury, maple-bitter character. It is the flavour people cannot place.
• Korarima — Ethiopian cardamom, larger and smokier than green cardamom.
• Ginger, garlic and onion, usually dried.
• Coriander, cumin and cardamom.
• Ajwain or bishop's weed, thyme-like and pungent.
• Nigella seed, allspice, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper.
• Rue and long pepper in more traditional blends.
• Salt, in many commercial versions — worth checking before you season a dish.

How hot is it, and how to cook with it

Moderately. Berbere is warming rather than fierce — the chilli is there for depth and colour as much as for heat, and a good blend tastes of fenugreek, cardamom and allspice as much as of chilli. Blends vary, and commercial ones sold outside Ethiopia are often milder.

Bloom it. Berbere is a powder, and like most powdered spice it tastes raw and dusty if it goes in at the end. Fry it in oil or niter kibbeh — Ethiopian spiced clarified butter — for thirty seconds to a minute before liquid goes in, and it opens up completely. This is the single most important technique for using it.

Give it time. Ethiopian stews cook slowly, and berbere rewards it. The blend is complex enough that a twenty-minute dish gets a fraction of what a two-hour one does.

Onions first, and a lot of them. The classic Ethiopian wat begins with a very large quantity of finely chopped onion cooked down dry, without fat, until it collapses — then the fat and the berbere go in. That base is what gives the stew its body.

What to make with it

• Doro wat — the chicken and hard-boiled egg stew that is the national dish, built on onions, berbere and niter kibbeh.
• Misir wat — red lentil stew. Straightforward, entirely plant-based, and the easiest good introduction to the blend.
• Siga wat and key wat — beef stews on the same pattern.
• Shiro — a stew of spiced ground chickpea or broad bean flour, thick and savoury.
• Rubbed onto roast chicken, lamb or vegetables, mixed with oil.
• In a lentil or bean soup outside Ethiopian cooking entirely, where it does what a curry powder might but with a different accent.
• Stirred into butter for grilled meat or corn.
• With eggs, fried in a little berbere butter.

The related blends

Berbere

The general-purpose blend. Chilli-based, complex, moderately hot. Cooked into stews.

Mitmita

Much hotter, simpler, based on bird's eye chilli with cardamom and cloves. Used as a table condiment and with raw meat dishes, not usually cooked into a stew.

Niter kibbeh

Not a spice blend but spiced clarified butter — simmered with ginger, garlic, korarima, fenugreek and other aromatics, then strained. Used as the cooking fat in most Ethiopian stews and worth making.

Awaze

A paste of berbere with wine or water, used as a dipping sauce.

Common questions