7 Comforting Ethiopian Dishes You Need To Try
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In Ethiopia, people eat with their right hands. The food is all about vegetables and spicy meat dishes. You’ll find thick stews served with flat sourdough bread. Ethiopian foods are often vegan since the cuisine is based around religious days, which exclude all animal products. If you’re lucky enough to live in a metropolitan area where the cuisine is a melting pot, you’ll probably have access to Ethiopian food and you should take advantage of it. Here are seven Ethiopian dishes you need to try.
1. Injera
The main vehicle for Ethiopian cuisine is injera, a sourdough-risen flatbread with a spongy texture. The beige fermented dough is usually made from an ancient Ethiopian grain called teff, which has more protein than quinoa. The first time you see injera, you might think it’s kinda funky looking. It’s squishy and sour-smelling, but it’ll be your new favorite utensil. You can use it to scoop up stews and veggies and deliver them straight to your mouth. No dishes involved.
2. Azifa
If you like lentils, you’ll want to get in on the Ethiopian dish known as azifa. It’s simple and approachable enough for anyone to eat. Common ingredients usually include shallots, green chilies, fresh chilies, basil, parsley, lemon juice, wine vinegar, olive oil and diced tomato. Here’s an azifa recipe that’ll be ready in 40 minutes. You can serve the African dish either hot or cool, but it’ll be ready faster if you eat it on the cool side.
3. Gomen
For a vegan Ethiopian dish that’ll give you all the soul food feels, there’s gomen (AKA Ethiopian collard greens). This is a dish flavored with Ethiopian-style spiced butter that’s flavored with cardamom, fenugreek and nigella seeds. Here’s a recipe that calls for Thai chiles, ginger, collard greens, garlic and white wine vinegar.
4. Chechebsa
The Ethiopian breakfast food chechebsa is a large fried flatbread that’s been torn into small pieces and mixed with berbere and niter kibbeh, an Ethiopian-spiced clarified butter with garlic, onion, grated ginger, ground black pepper and turmeric. You’ll want to mix the flatbread, berbere and spiced butter together until the whole thing becomes soft and buttery. It’s best served immediately in a bowl with a spoonful of yogurt on top.
5. Mesir Wat
Wat is a traditional stew or curry that could be made with any kind of protein ranging from chicken to lamb to beef or vegetables. Wat gets flavored with spice mixtures like berbere with chili peppers, garlic, ginger, basil, nigella and fenugreek. Mesir Wat is a spiced puree of red lentils. For an easy-to-follow recipe, this version of mesir wat has onion, garlic, ginger, olive oil, turmeric, paprika, cayenne and red lentils.
6. Kitfo
Steak tartare fans, kitfo is the Ethiopian dish you need on your radar. The dish consists of minced raw beef that’s marinated in mitmita (a chili powder-based spice blend) and niter kibbeh. Kitfo is usually served alongside a mild cheese or cooked greens like gomen.
7. Doro Alicha
If you like turmeric, butter and chicken, you’ll be into doro alicha. The Ethiopian dish has chicken thighs marinated in lemon smothered in a sauce of butter, onions, garlic, ginger, turmeric, cayenne, cardamom and cinnamon. This chicken stew is all kinds of comforting with plenty of powerful spices. There’s no shortage of flavor in Ethiopian cuisine.
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