The atlas · A cuisine · Ethiopia and Eritrea

Ethiopian

Also Habesha

Stews called wat, deep with berbere and spiced butter, eaten with the hands from a shared platter of sour, spongy injera.

Where it comes from

Injera is made from teff, a tiny grain domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands and grown there for thousands of years. Its batter ferments for days, giving the bread its sourness and its bubbled surface.

The Ethiopian Orthodox calendar has a great many fasting days, when the devout eat no animal products at all — which is why the cuisine has one of the world's richest traditions of vegan cooking: lentils, chickpea shiro, greens and more.

Where in it

  1. Addis AbabaThe capital, where the regions' cooking meets: butcher-restaurants searing tibs to order, kitfo houses, fasting platters on Wednesdays and Fridays, and coffee ceremonies everywhere.Tibs
  2. Gurage countryThe highlands south-west of Addis Ababa, around Wolkite: home of kitfo, and of kocho, the dense bread of the false banana that the Gurage eat with it.Kitfo
  3. Tigray and the northAround Mekelle, where the cooking is Tigrinya-speaking and shared with Eritrea: tihlo of roasted barley, shiro, and injera often made with sorghum or barley as well as teff.Tihlo
  4. AsmaraEritrea's capital, sharing the Habesha table — zigni, shiro, ga'at — with an Italian-era layer of cafés, macchiato and pasta that is now its own.ZigniGenfo
  5. HararAn old walled city in the east, with a Harari kitchen of its own and a name on some of the country's most prized coffee, grown in the hills around it.

How it cooks

Onions cooked dry
Mounds of finely chopped red onion cooked slowly in a dry pan, before any fat — the base of wat.
Niter kibbeh
Butter clarified with spices — fenugreek, cardamom, garlic, ginger — the fat that seasons everything.
Fermenting injera
Teff batter left for two or three days, then poured thin onto a hot mitad.
Eating together
One platter, torn injera as the spoon — and gursha, feeding a mouthful to someone else.

Always in the kitchen

teffberberemitmitaniter kibbehshiro (chickpea flour)red lentilred oniongarlicgingerkorarimafenugreekawaze

Cook from it

Tonight, with what's good in October

Its classics

EthiopianDoro watChicken stewed slowly in onions, berbere and niter kibbeh until dark and thick, with whole hard-boiled eggs.No one here has made it yetEthiopianMisir watRed lentils cooked in a berbere-spiced onion base until soft and thick — the everyday fasting stew.No one here has made it yetEthiopianShiroA smooth, thick stew of spiced chickpea or broad-bean flour, simmered with onion, garlic and berbere.No one here has made it yetEthiopianInjeraA thin, sour, spongy flatbread of fermented teff, cooked on one side only — plate, spoon and bread at once.No one here has made it yetEthiopianKitfoFinely minced raw beef, warmed through with niter kibbeh and mitmita, served with fresh cheese and greens.No one here has made it yetEthiopianTibsCubes of beef or lamb seared hot with onion, green chilli and spiced butter — quick, where wat is slow.No one here has made it yetEthiopianGenfoA very thick porridge of barley or wheat flour, shaped into a mound with a well of spiced butter and berbere in the middle.No one here has made it yetEthiopianTihloBalls of dough made from roasted barley flour, dipped one at a time into a hot, spiced stew or berbere sauce.No one here has made it yetEthiopianZigniBeef stewed long with a mound of onions, berbere and spiced butter, often with tomato — red, thick and hot.No one here has made it yet

Cooked here

No one here has cooked Ethiopian yet.