Beef Tibs

I had some extra beef in the freezer and I am always looking for new ways to consume berbere, so an obvious option was Beef Tibs.  This is a classic Ethiopian dish, basically beef in a thick, spicy berbere infused sauce.  Pretty simple.  The blend of butter, berbere, ginger, garlic, and onion is irresistible.

Like most of my cooking, I start with a recipe as a base and go from there.  I found a decent looking recipe on my new food app Yummy.  I liked it in that the beef is fried instead of boiled in the sauce, adding to the depth of flavor.

The first change that I made were in reducing the butter somewhat to improve the healthiness.  Butter makes everything good, but there is no reason to go overboard.  Ethiopians might also use spiced butter, niter kibbeh.  Basically this is clarified butter with spices added.  I don't have any and didn't really feel like making it.  The berbere adds more that enough flavor by itself.  I also doubled the amount of sauce.  The sauce is frequently the best part of a dish, but most recipes give you too little.  I like to have tons to pour over rice or dip bread into.  Sauce is cheap.  Finally, I tweaked the cooking of the beef so that it comes out juicy rather than dried out.

I used to shred ginger and mince garlic, but I find that the flavors are too easily cooked away, so I have gone to coarsely chopping them with much better results.

Beef Tibs

1/4 cup unsalted butter
4 cups chopped onions
2 Tbsp diced, peel ginger
1/4 cup diced garlic
1/4 cup berbere
Kosher salt
1 lb beef, diced into big chunks, as for making a kebab
1 Tbsp canola oil
1 tsp lemon juice

1)  Melt butter and heat until at frying temperature, but being careful not to heat it too high and burn it.
2) Turn heat to medium and fry onions, ginger, garlic, and berbere.  Be careful not to burn the spices or garlic.
3) Heat until the onions are fully softened and have incorporated the berbere.
4) Allow to cool slightly and puree in a food processor.
5) Salt the beef chunk liberally with kosher salt
6) Heat oil until just smoking in frying pan.
7) Fry the beef, searing the outside, but keeping juicy and not full cooked in the middle.  This should take a minute or two, so you need to work quickly.
8) Add the onion paste back in the pan.  Rinse any remaining paste into the pan with a little water.
9) Simmer a couple of minutes to finish cooking the beef.  Don't go overboard, as the beef will get tough.
10) Serve over rice or scoop up with thin bread, like a pita or naan.