Ethiopian Food Primer: 10 Essential Dishes And Drinks
By tradition, meals are enjoyed communally and are served on a large, round platter. All diners eat from this common platter with their hands (right hand only, please) and are expected to wash their hands before eating. This means everyone can help themselves to anything they want, and diners get to sample a little bit of everything. Here are some essential dishes you need to know about and try. The ritual of the cutting, known as q’wirt, is a big part of tere siga, and, like other Ethiopian meat dishes, it’s usually reserved for the most important of celebrations. A clay-red stew of chickpeas and broad beans, shiro is a vegetarian’s best friend in meat-mad Ethiopia.
FISH/ASA TIBS
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Known as ‘fasting food’, Orthodox Christian Ethiopians usually eat shiro on Wednesdays and Fridays, when they abstain from meat and dairy. Traditional Ethiopian cuisine is as distinctive as the country it comes from. A big part of the national identity, food runs deep through Ethiopia‘s ancient culture. Often intimate, always hands-on, it has a strong communal element that creates a dinnertime bond unlike anywhere else in the world.
Injera
While tere siga, like most Ethiopian dishes, is served with injera, it also comes with a knife so diners can slice off bite-sized pieces at will. One legend states that it was first devised by military operatives in the 16th century as a way for soldiers to get their protein fix without lighting fires and being detected by enemy forces. The dish's popularity today makes an odd kind of sense in light on the heavily vegetarian diet kept by Ethiopia's majority Christian population. While observant Christians do forgo meat and dairy for nearly half the days of the year, most are not strict vegetarians. So on the days when their faith allows meat, they're happy to go all in. While Ethiopian cooking celebrates meat in all forms, it also has a long tradition of vegetarian cooking.
BEETS & POTATOES SALAD
Water is then brought to a boil in the coffee pot, traditionally a round clay pot with a long neck and spout, before the ground coffee is added and heated. The strong, fresh brew is served with sugar in tiny cups –- a perfect way to cap off a rich Ethiopian meal and appreciate coffee as it was originally intended to be enjoyed. Fresh chopped collard greens simmered with beef cubes and ribs, finished with Ethiopian butter and spices. Injera – a spongy, tangy, crepe-like flatbread – is foundational to Ethiopian cuisine, both in a literal and metaphorical sense. In most cases, injera forms the literal base of the meal — the large platter on which your food is served will be lined with a round of injera, with the rest of the food placed on top of it. Injera not only serves as an edible plate liner but an eating utensil.
QUANTA FIRFIR
If hot chilli sauce first thing in the morning doesn’t entice, firfir is a winner any time of day, particularly for vegetarians who fancy a break from shiro. Another variation, chechebsa firfir, swaps out injera for pitta-style flat bread. Wot is a popular meal for special occasions, particularly after prolonged periods of fasting at Easter and Christmas.
SHIRO
The food was delicious, and their flavorful cheese dish was some of the best cheese we have ever tried... If you have not tried Ethiopian food, or experienced eating it, then you're in for a treat. I moved here from the Bay Area a while ago and at the time there was, may be one Ethiopian restaurant that I knew of in Charlotte. Now, we have a few to choose from, and Abugida has to be my favorite. Opt for betam leb leb (cooked) if the thought of nearly raw meat doesn’t appeal. Strips of chiken sauteed in onion,garlic,tomato,red pepper.
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DENISH WOTT
And while coffee has long been part of the Ethiopian landscape, it's never been taken for granted. The traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony –- which you can experience yourself if you find the right restaurant, even in the U.S. –- shows the culture's reverence for coffee. First, the serving table is scattered with fresh grass to evoke the outdoors. Next, the hostess lights a stick of incense before showing the guests a pan of green coffee beans, which she roasts over an open flame before grinding.
While not much to look at (it looks exactly how you'd expect a bunch of mashed beans to look), there's far more to it than meets the eye. Recipes vary with cooks and regions, but a typical example includes garlic, tomatoes, berbere (Ethiopian spice mix), ginger, turmeric, and cinnamon. Versions can be thick (rather like mashed potatoes) or runny like a sauce. Firfir is a popular breakfast dish made from leftover injera. Shreds of the flat bread are cooked in a simple sauce of berbere, onions, oil or butter and sometimes with scrambled eggs (enkulal firfir).
And because you'll probably get a taste of injera with every bite you take, its distinctive tang is one of the defining flavors of Ethiopian cuisine. Most people view it as a dish for special occasions, and it’s widely eaten on Orthodox Easter Sunday after 55 long days of fasting. In bigger cities, like Addis and Mekelle, it’s found year-round in special restaurants known as kitfo houses, where it’s the only thing on the menu. Wots, or stews, are a common Ethiopian dish, and one of the more common versions you'll see on restaurant menus is doro wot, or chicken stew. But put aside all thoughts of chicken pot pie filling or other familiar preparations –- doro wot is proof that ordering chicken doesn't mean settling for bland or familiar. And the good news is you won't have to – Ethiopian food is meant to be shared.
It’s a simple classic, cooked with red onions stir-fry style, accompanied with fresh greens and ever-present injera. Depending on how it’s garnished, it can be a mild or spicy dish. Heat things up with sliced fresh green chilli and plenty of berbere sauce.
Some versions get an extra flavor boost from spiced butter, an Ethiopian pantry staple consisting of clarified butter simmered with spices such as coriander, cinnamon, and cloves. Pieces of injera soaked in spiced berbere sauce, cooked with fresh diced tomatoes, onions, garlic, jalapeno peppers, and Enat’s special spices. While this hearty dish is popular on fast days, it's not seen as an abstemious dish by any means. Indeed, some variants –- such as tegabino shiro, which is thickened with flour and served still bubbling in a tiny clay pot –- are downright festive in their presentation. Shiro can also be served for breakfast, mixed with shredded injera (Ethiopian fermented flatbread) –- this makes the already hearty puree an even more fortifying way to start a busy day. For home cooks who want to try their hand at shiro, an easy shortcut to getting a super-smooth texture is to use chickpea flour instead of cooked, mashed chickpeas.
Meals come with a basket of folded injera, and you tear off pieces of it and use them to pick up whatever morsel you feel like tasting next. And after that, of course, you eat the injera itself, which has absorbed the food's flavorful seasonings while keeping them off your fingers. Tortilla slice filled with lean ground beef mixed with mitmita, spiced butter, ayib and peppers. Western cooks and diners have become increasingly aware of this in recent years, as nose-to-tail dining has gained popularity.
Because of its richness however, it's often served with other dishes such as minced spinach or alb, a crumbly cheese somewhat like cottage cheese. These extras offer a welcome contrast to the richness of the meat and make the already substantial dish into a full meal. Second, it gets its leavening (and spongy texture and uniquely tangy flavor) through fermentation, much like a sourdough.
There’s a slight beery edge owing to a type of hop leaf used in the brewing. Be aware that with all uncooked meat, there’s an added risk of illness, most notably, tape worms and salmonella. Abugida Ethiopian Cafe & Restaurant based in Charlotte, NC specializes in delicious and reasonably priced Ethiopian cuisine, including our house specialties and other customer favorites.
From roadside shacks to high-end restaurants, you can find it all over Addis Ababa, but Fendika, known for its lively traditional music shows, is a city-wide favourite. Tere siga means raw meat in Amharic – and that’s pretty much all there is to it. More like a mead, its fermented honey is strong in flavour, with a sweet-malty taste. Often a home brew, tej can vary in strength, usually on the potent side.
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