Eater Video
Chef Elia Taddesse uses berbere and mitmita spices to create crunchy, moist, and flavorful fried chicken at Doro Soul Food
When chef Elias Taddesse pivoted from working at high-end French restaurants in New York City to exploring Ethiopian flavors in his own kitchen, he knew he had to open his first shop in the nation’s capital. “What’s a better place to do it than D.C., with the biggest Ethiopian population next to Ethiopia,” he explained. Now he’s running one-of-a-kind fried chicken shop Doro Soul Food, serving up buttermilk-marinated fried chicken with an extra kick from berbere and mitmita spice blends.
Taddesse walks through how he creates his famous crispy chicken dipped in a hot oil glaze. First, he meticulously breaks down whole chickens every other day, working through 15 to 25 cases. Then he makes his dry rub seasoned with classics like garlic powder and turmeric, plus a berbere spice blend that packs a punch. He combines bread flour, all-purpose flour, and self-rising flour in the marinade to create the perfect crunchy exterior that won’t get too soggy over time or be too thick to chew through. After marinating in the fridge, the chicken is dredged in that same triple flour blend, plus a mix of tapioca starch, potato starch, and cornstarch. Each portion is double fried, with moist pieces of chicken being flash fried to order for that perfect crisp bite. Finally, each piece is served either naked, coated in a berbere glaze, or dipped in extra spicy mitmita hot sauce made with bird’s eye chiles.
Plenty of central ingredients are made in house, like the niter kibbeh (clarified butter), spiked with korerima (black cardamom) and besobela (dried Ethiopian basil), and the doro wot, a spice paste made with richly spiced caramelized onions cooked down for hours. Kibbeh is added to almost everything in the kitchen and the the doro wat is a central part of the mac and cheese roux, giving a deep earthy flavor to the creamy side dish. Taddesse is just getting started with his carry out chicken operation, with plans to open a large sit-down restaurant in the future.
Watch the latest episode of Experts to see every stage of Taddesse’s process for making crispy, berbere-spiced chicken.
