Kitfo (Ethiopian Minced Raw Beef)
Abuja, Nigeria · View all recipes
Overview
Kitfo is very finely minced raw beef, warmed through with spiced clarified butter and chilli. The name says what it is: kitfo comes from the Amharic for chopping finely. It is Ethiopian and Eritrean, and it is celebration food, a dish for major holidays, weddings and family occasions rather than an ordinary weeknight. Two things define it. The first is niter kibbeh, the clarified butter infused with garlic, ginger, cardamom, fenugreek and other spices, which is what carries flavour into meat that is never exposed to direct heat. The second is mitmita, the fierce Ethiopian chilli blend built on pili-pili peppers with cardamom, cloves and salt. Both are what separate kitfo from any other steak tartare. Doneness has its own vocabulary, and the names matter because they are what you order by. Tere kitfo is fully raw. Leb leb is warmed just enough to melt the butter through it. Yebesele is taken further still. Gored gored, which is on this site as its own recipe, is the closely related dish where the beef is cut into cubes rather than minced, same tradition, different knife work, noticeably different in the mouth. It is served with injera, and usually alongside gomen, the collard greens, and ayib, the fresh Ethiopian cheese, whose mildness is there to answer the heat.
AFN Heritage Note
Kitfo is an Ethiopian and Eritrean dish of finely minced raw beef dressed with niter kibbeh, the spiced clarified butter, and mitmita chilli. The name derives from the Amharic verb meaning to chop finely, and the dish is associated with major holidays and celebrations.
Ingredients
Dietary tags are provided by contributors as a guide, not verified by AFN, and they depend on the products you buy. If you have a serious allergy, check every ingredient yourself. Cooking, allergies and your own judgement
Directions
- 1
If you are making the spiced butter yourself, warm the clarified butter gently in a small pot with the coarsely ground spices, the garlic and the scallion. Take it off the heat as soon as the butter smells fragrant and the garlic begins to colour, leave it to stand for 10 minutes, then strain it through a fine sieve or a paper coffee filter. Wipe out the pot.
- 2
Trim the beef of every scrap of fat and sinew, then cut it into 1 to 1 1/2 inch cubes.
- 3
Chop the cubes by hand with a sharp knife until fine but not pasty. If you use a food processor, work in three batches and pulse rather than run it, stopping while the meat is still fine rather than smooth.
- 4
Grind the mitmita, berbere and cardamom finely in a mortar.
- 5
Warm the strained butter gently in the pot, then work in the ground spices, the beef and salt until evenly combined.
- 6
For tere kitfo, serve at this point, raw. For leb leb, keep it over very low heat only until the butter melts through and the meat warms. For yebesele, continue until cooked through.
- 7
Garnish with the chopped jalapeño and basil, and serve with lettuce leaves for rolling, alongside injera, gomen and ayib.
Africook’s Notes
- This is raw meat as written. Buy from a butcher you trust, ask for meat suitable for eating raw, keep it refrigerated, and prepare and serve it the same day.
- Trim relentlessly. Fat and sinew that would soften in a cooked dish stay tough and unpleasant here.
- Chop by hand if you can. A food processor turns finely chopped beef into paste in seconds, and the texture is most of the dish.
- Niter kibbeh and mitmita are what make this kitfo rather than tartare. Both keep well and both are sold at Ethiopian grocers.
- Leb leb is the useful middle setting if raw beef is not for you or your guests: warmed only enough to melt the butter through, it keeps the texture while taking the edge off.
- Ayib, the mild fresh cheese, is not a garnish. It is there to cut the mitmita, and the dish is noticeably harsher without it.
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