Ethiopian food has many unique flavors and dishes. Beef, chicken, lamb, raw meat, and lamb stomach are common, as well as vegetables. Doro wot is a very popular chicken stew in Ethiopia. Orthodox Christians don’t eat meat several times each year so there are many vegan dishes. The spice commonly used in dishes is Berbere, which is also known as the king of spices. It is actually a mix of different spices mixed together, and it’s a little different depending on where you go. The usually ingredients are cumin seeds, coriander seeds, fundergreek seeds, black peppercorns, allspice berries, seeds of green cardamom pods, cloves, dried red chillies, sweet paprika, salt, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, and tumeric.
If you ever go to an Ethiopian restaurant, it will be helpful to know that “tibs” means fried, and “wat” means either saucy or stewed. We had many ‘wat’ dishes when we tried Ethiopian food. I went to an Ethiopian restaurant with my mom and Nana. We sat down and our waiter gave us towels to wipe our hands on because we were going to eat with our hands! Fun fact – in Ethiopia people eat with their right hand because they use their left hand to with in the bathroom! Ethiopians do wash their hands, it’s just tradition. Our waiter served us our drinks – I got a mango juice. It was thick and sweet and tasted like mangoes. When our food came, we had scoops of food on a large skinny bread that had many tiny holes, like a sponge. The bread is called injera. We had stewed chickpeas, red lentils, potato and cabbage, collard greens, and green beans. I also had sambusas, which are minced meat rolled into a flaky dough. The food was very fragrant. Finally, our sweet or spicy food went together well with the sour injera bread. We left full and happy.
The world would never know coffee if it weren’t for a herd of goats. A goat herder in Ethiopia found that his goats were getting hyper, and he wanted to know why. He found that his goats were eating red berries, which were making them hyper. These red beans were coffee beans! That was the glorious beginning of coffee. Ethiopia’s coffee beans are smaller than beans in other countries. Adults and kids drink small amounts of coffee.
