Ethiopia boasts a rich culinary heritage, where meat plays a pivotal role in special occasions and cultural symbolism. The consumption of meat is deeply intertwined with religious beliefs, particularly Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, which observes numerous fasting days prohibiting meat.
“Meat plays pivotal and vital parts in special occasions and its cultural symbolic weight is markedly greater than that accorded to most other food,” Semeneh Seleshe writes in his 2013 study, Meat Consumption Culture in Ethiopia. “The consumption of meat and meat products has a very tidy association with religious beliefs and is influenced by religions. In fact, Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity has as many as 250 “fasting days,” which means no food before midday and no meat when you finally have a meal. Semeneh says that 62 percent of Ethiopian Christians observe in this way, and about 85 percent of butchers in Addis Ababa close on Wednesdays and Fridays, which are fasting days.
Archaeologists near the Afar town of Bouri in 1999 uncovered prehistoric antelope bones scarred with scratches from rocks that they believe the ancients used as knives. As if channeling the spirits of their ultra-ancient ancestors, Ethiopians today cherish meat, so much so that some of them spend more than 200 days of the year not eating it. “We’re right at the beginning of the great leap that followed meat eating,” UC Berkeley’s J.
Traditional Ethiopian Meat Cuts
In their thorough (perhaps definitive) 1985 essay, Ethiopian Meat (Beef) Cut, Tsehay Neway and Feseha Gebreab studied beef cuts in the cities of Debre Zeit, Modjo, Nazareth, Dukam, and their surroundings in the center of the country, not too far from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. They also drew on data from the slaughter of 40 other animals in a traditional manner known as kircha, wherein a large group of people - as many as 20 or 30 in a community - share the animal.
As Semeneh describes the practice: “A cow or an ox is commonly butchered for the sole purpose of selling within the community. “Meat is one of the most universally liked foods,” their report begins, “and people in a11 parts of the world have established their own way of cutting and preparing meat for consumption. Therefore, there are now, in every civilized society, traditionally accepted modes of cutting meat. The scholars found that “no two meat cuts of similar origin are identical.
Read also: Derek Walcott: Colonialism Explored
Needless to say, it takes some skill and training to partition a large animal into so many clearly defined cuts of meat. USAID, an agency that aids development around the world, has published a vividly illustrated and detailed guidethat teaches Ethiopians how to butcher an animal, although the guide notes that it’s “not a substitute for hands on practical training.” Where Tsehay and Feseha use drawings in their essay to show the cuts of meat, the USAID guidebook uses many color photographs. Here, then, are the 14 cuts that Tsehay and Feseha identified, all named in Amharic, the state language of Ethiopia. They may well have different names in other Ethiopian languages, like Tigrinya and Oromo. The researchers’ descriptions often use medical terms to refer to body parts, so I’ll try to simplify.
Here are some of the key meat cuts identified:
- Shent: Prized for raw consumption, this cut comes from the neck and rump.
- Bete Salgegne: A combination of meat from the shoulder, ribs, and brisket, valued for its fat content.
- Talak: The meat of choice for preparing kitfo, raw chopped beef seasoned with spiced butter and hot red pepper.
- Chekena: A tender cut from the iliopsoas muscle, often roasted or pan-broiled.
- Werch: A lower grade of meat from the shoulders and arms, best eaten cooked.
- Dendes: Considered the lowest grade, composed of bone and detached pieces of flesh.
The eminent Ethiopian scholar Richard Pankhurst writes about some of these cuts of beef in his 1986 essay, The Hierarchy of the Feast: The Partition of the Ox in Traditional Ethiopia. Cattle was very important in ancient Ethiopia, but even if you owned a cow that you planned to use for food, a commoner couldn’t slaughter his cow without permission from the local ruler.
Pankhurst’s essay - his information drawn from historic accounts - explores how law and custom prescribed who got what upon the slaughtering of an ox. People of the highest ranks got such prized cuts as the “small meat” from “the rump bone down to the hind quarters,” or the “large meat” from the hip bone with part of the buttock.
Ethiopian Food " How to Make Derek Tibs "ደረቅ ጥብስ አሰራር"
Popular Ethiopian Meat Dishes
Ethiopian cuisine offers a variety of meat dishes, each with unique flavors and preparation methods.
Read also: Flavorful Ethiopian Dish
In addition to tere siga, another general word for raw meat is brindo. And this way of eating meat is strictly for adults: You have to reach a certain age before your parents will let you have raw meat. “Raw meat is very rare in the diet, so children would not be high on the pecking order,” he says. “Expatriate Ethiopians have lots of cultural myths that claim historical background, but really only date from the Addis Ababa elite or upper-middle-class practice in the mid-20th century. Raw beef cut in chunks or strips has been around for a long time. Kitfo is a fairly recent addition to urban diet, but it is popular.
Two more things to note about kitfo. First, in the Gurage culture from which it came into the national cuisine, you don’t eat it with injera the way you do other dishes. The Gurages scoop it up with long-handled spoons, often made out of animal horns. And your “bread” at the meal is traditionally qocho, made from the fermented trunk of the enset plant, sometimes called the false banana because it resembles a banana tree. The kitfo comes to the table displayed on a dark green enset leaf with some qocho on the side.
For those who prefer their meat cooked, siga wot is the basic dish: chunks of meat stewed in kulet, a thick sauce of onions, berbere (another red pepper powder) and niter kibe, plus a few other spices (chef’s choice). The mild variation is siga alicha, where the spices are ginger and turmeric rather than red pepper.
Derek tibs are pieces of beef fried up in niter kibe, with onions and jalapeño peppers tossed in. The word derek means “dry,” so you won’t get any juicy kulet with this variation. Or you might try goden tibs (Ethiopian short ribs of beef, lamb or goat) or, if you can find it, some qualima or wakalim (varieties of Ethiopian sausage).
Restaurant menus can sometimes get a little confusing because of the sub-categories or alternative names of these basic dishes. Zilzil tibs, for example, is essentially derek tibs with the meat cut into strips rather than chunks. Kay wot (or quy wot) is just a more descriptive name for siga wot - kay means “red,” which tells you that there’s hot pepper in it. Dishes like shent tibs or chekena tibs refer to the cut of meat that the restaurant uses.
Read also: Authentic Chicken Tibs Recipe
Bole Ethiopian Cuisine is recognized for the exquisite meals. All entrées are prepared with the finest ingredients that are delicately blended with warm, zesty spices to deliver the full flavor of authentic Ethiopian cuisine to the Twin Cities community!
Here's a summary of the dishes mentioned:
| Dish Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Kitfo | Raw chopped beef seasoned with spiced butter and hot red pepper. |
| Siga Wot | Chunks of meat stewed in a thick sauce of onions, berbere, and niter kibe. |
| Siga Alicha | Mild variation of Siga Wot, seasoned with ginger and turmeric. |
| Derek Tibs | Pieces of beef fried in niter kibe with onions and jalapeño peppers. |
| Zilzil Tibs | Derek Tibs with the meat cut into strips. |
