Chicken & Red Lentil Stew

An Ethiopian delicacy packed with protein

So yeah, I didn’t take that picture.  I’ll post my usual crappy photo below in a minute.

I made this dish for the first time on the 3rd night of my recent section hike.  We had just finished an over 2000 ft. uphill climb through light snow and cold, gusty winds, and had finally arrived at Chestnut Knob Shelter.  A beautiful building, but about as warm inside as a lawyer’s heart (I kid, I kid).  Our feet were wet and frozen, and my fingers were numb.  And because there wasn’t a fireplace, it took a long time for me to warm up enough to cook dinner, much less find the motivation to do so.  Well, wine helped- this dish calls for 2 oz. of red wine, and my bottle had 7 oz. in it, so I practiced a bit of Leave No Trace before starting to cook.

This turned out to be a great choice for a cold evening.  Stews are always good in this setting, and this particular one features the staple of Ethiopian cuisine- Berbere spice mix.  It’s not overly hot, but it WILL warm your innards rather nicely.  You don’t have to do this, but the dish goes very nicely served with couscous.  I brought along TrailFork’s Apricot Almond Couscous for that purpose, and it was definitely a winner.  You could just as easily bring plain couscous.  If you do, pack some extras like dried currants, almonds or pine nuts, a couple of dried apricots (dice ’em up), etc.

You may need to order the Berbere spice mix, and red lentils can be hard to find in a small town too.  By the way, red lentils are not only tasty, they cook up quicker than most lentils do.

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 cup dried red lentils in a snack-sized ziploc

4 oz. freeze-dried chunk chicken, or somewhat less if using shredded

1/2 jar Litehouse dehydrated red onion (in small ziploc)

2 cloves fresh garlic, or dehydrated equivalent

1-2 oz. dehydrated tomato dices in small ziploc (I like more tomato personally)

1 packet of Ghee or olive oil

2 1/2 TB Berbere in mini ziploc

1/2 TB Amore tomato paste from a tube (if you have a near empty tube after cooking a pasta dinner, this is a great way to use the rest up).

1 packet of chicken broth (Packit Gourmet)

2 oz. red wine, preferably Shiraz or similar

1 packet True Lemon

DIRECTIONS:

Add a bit of water to the tomato, chicken and lentil ziplocs a few minutes before starting to cook, enough to generally rehydrate them.

Saute garlic in ghee/olive oil (if using dehydrated garlic, add during next step), then add berbere and wine and reduce for a minute or so.  Lower heat.  Finish the rest of the wine.  You know you want to.

Add tomatoes, red onion and tomato paste.

Add lentils and chicken.

Add chicken broth packet and 1 cup of water.  You may feel like you need to add more water than this, and that’s fine.

Simmer for 20 minutes or so.  Add the packet of True Lemon during the final minute and stir.

Serve over couscous.  Or eat plain.

NOTES:  If you don’t have tomato paste, it’ll still taste fine, it just won’t have that extra tanginess.  The amount served above will be a modest dinner for two hikers.  If you add couscous, it will be enough to slay two big appetites.

Oh, here’s what it looked like inside the darkened shelter on my crappy old Galaxy S5: