The traditional food of Ethiopia is injera, a large, sour, spongy flatbread made from fermented teff flour, eaten with spiced stews called wot. The best-known dishes are doro wot (chicken stewed in berbere chilli paste with whole boiled eggs, widely called the national dish), kitfo (minced raw beef dressed with mitmita and spiced butter), tibs (sautéed meat) and shiro (a smooth stew of ground chickpeas or broad beans). Food is shared from one platter, eaten with the right hand, and shaped by the Ethiopian Orthodox fasting calendar, which makes meat, dairy and eggs off-limits on about 180 days a year for lay believers. A meal ends with the coffee ceremony, a fitting close in a country where Arabica coffee still grows wild.
This guide follows a single meal, from the bread that arrives first to the coffee that comes last.
Injera and Teff: The Bread That Is Also the Plate
Teff (Eragrostis tef) is a tiny grass seed that originated in the Ethiopian Highlands and has been cultivated there since at least 1000 BCE, possibly as early as 4000 BCE. A single grain is under a millimetre across, and a thousand of them weigh about 0.3 grams. Yields are highest between 1,800 and 2,100 metres, with 450 to 550 mm of rain a year, conditions found across much of the Ethiopian plateau. In 2016 Ethiopia grew more than 90 percent of the world's teff, and around 6.5 million small farmers depend on it. The government banned exports of raw teff in 2006 for fear that foreign demand would push up the price of the national staple.
Injera is made by mixing teff flour with water and leaving it to ferment, usually for 24 to 72 hours, with a splash of ersho, the yellowish liquid saved from the last batch, acting as a starter. Yeasts and lactic acid bacteria do the work: researchers have identified at least 68 yeast species and at least 107 species of lactic acid bacteria in injera. A little of the batter is boiled into a paste called absit and stirred back in, which helps produce the holes known as "eyes".
The batter is poured in a spiral onto a mitad, a round clay griddle heated to about 90–95 °C, covered with a lid and steamed for two to four minutes without being flipped. The result is roughly 50–60 cm across and only 6–7 mm thick, smooth underneath and pitted on top. Those eyes are what soak up the stews. Pure white teff injera is expensive and a mark of status; cheaper versions mix in sorghum in the lowlands or barley in the highlands. Clay griddles found at archaeological sites dating back as far as 600 AD are taken as possible evidence that injera was already being made then.
At the table a whole injera is spread over a tray, often set on a woven mesob basket, the stews are ladled on top, and rolled spare injera is served on the side. Diners tear off a piece with the right hand, pinch up some stew and eat. By the end of the meal the bottom layer has soaked up the sauces and is eaten too.
Doro Wot, a Ten-Hour Chicken Stew
Wot (also written wat) is the general Amharic word for a thick stew, and the technique that defines it starts with onions. Large quantities of chopped red onion are cooked slowly in a dry pot, with no fat, until most of their water has gone. Only then is the spiced butter added, followed by the spice paste and the main ingredient. The onions break down completely and become the body of the sauce, which is why a good wot needs no flour or cream to thicken it.
Doro wot, made with chicken, is the most prized of all. It is usually finished with peeled whole hard-boiled eggs and is described as the national dish and the most popular traditional food in both Ethiopia and neighbouring Eritrea. Because it takes around ten hours to prepare properly, it is a festival and family-gathering dish rather than everyday food. Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel) make a Sabbath version called sanbat wat, using vegetable oil instead of butter to keep meat and dairy apart.
Not every wot is fiery. A spicy, berbere-red stew is called key wot, while a milder yellow one coloured with turmeric is alicha. Names are built by adding the main ingredient, so siga wot is beef stew and misir wot is red lentil stew.
Berbere, Mitmita and Niter Kibbeh
Three seasonings give Ethiopian food its flavour. Berbere is the red spice blend in most wots. Its base is dried chilli pepper, ground with coriander, garlic, ginger, fenugreek, nigella and two ingredients that grow in Ethiopia and are little known abroad: besobela (Ethiopian holy basil) and korarima (Aframomum corrorima, sometimes called Ethiopian cardamom). In Amharic the word berbere also simply means chilli pepper.
Mitmita is hotter and simpler: an orange-red powder of African bird's eye chilli, korarima, cloves and salt. It is rubbed into kitfo, sprinkled on ful (stewed fava beans) or served in a little pile at the edge of the tray for dipping.
Niter kibbeh is butter clarified like ghee but simmered first with besobela, koseret, fenugreek, cumin, turmeric and korarima, then strained. It gives meat dishes their rich, perfumed finish. For fasting days cooks make a version from vegetable oil called yeqimem zeyet.
Kitfo and Tibs: The Meat Course
Kitfo comes from the Gurage people. The name derives from a Semitic root meaning "to chop finely", and the dish is minced beef marinated in mitmita and niter kibbeh. It is traditionally served raw; ask for it leb leb and it arrives lightly cooked. In Gurage country it is eaten not with injera but with kocho, a dense flatbread made from the fermented pulp of the enset or "false banana" plant, alongside fresh ayibe cheese and cooked greens called gomen. It is a favourite for holidays such as Meskel, the feast of the Finding of the True Cross on 27 September.
Tibs is meat (beef, mutton or goat) cut into pieces and sautéed, often with onion and chilli, and brought to the table sizzling in a small clay dish. The mid-18th-century European visitor Remedius Prutky recorded that grilled meat was served to pay a particular compliment to a guest, and tibs is still the dish ordered to mark an occasion. Pork is avoided almost everywhere: Orthodox Christians shun it by custom and religious rule, and Ethiopian Muslims and Jews avoid both pork and shellfish.
Shiro and the 180 Fast Days
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church counts about 250 fasting days a year, of which roughly 180 are obligatory for lay people rather than only for priests and monks. On those days the faithful eat no meat, milk, butter or eggs, which is why Ethiopian cooking has so many vegan dishes. Wednesdays and Fridays are fast days for most of the year (the exception is the 50 days after Easter), and on top of those come the seasonal fasts shown below.
The star of the fasting table is shiro, a smooth stew made from powdered roasted chickpeas or broad beans cooked with onion, garlic and often ginger or chilli. It is a fixture of fasting days and of Ramadan alike; tegabino shiro arrives bubbling in a small clay pot. Around it sit misir wot (red lentils in berbere), kik alicha (mild yellow split peas), gomen, and potato-and-carrot stews. A platter of several of these on one injera is the classic fasting combination. Because animal fat is banned on fast days, Ethiopian cooks long ago turned to oils from sesame, safflower and nug (niger seed).
Leftovers are not wasted. Torn injera tossed with stew becomes firfir, a common breakfast, and shiro mixed into shredded injera is shiro fitfit.
Buna: Coffee from Kaffa to the Jebena
The coffee plant Coffea arabica grows wild in the highland forests of south-western Ethiopia, and the historical province of Kaffa is usually named as its home; Kaffa is sometimes proposed as the source of the word "coffee", although the standard derivation runs through Ottoman Turkish kahve to Arabic qahwah. The popular story of a 9th-century goatherd named Kaldi who noticed his goats dancing after eating the berries did not appear in writing until 1671. Drinking coffee as a brewed beverage seems to have developed across the Red Sea in Yemen, and Ethiopian Christians themselves avoided coffee, which they associated with Muslims, until the 19th century.
Today it is central to daily life. Ethiopia is Africa's largest coffee producer and the world's fifth largest, with 496,200 tonnes in 2022, and about half of its crop is drunk at home. The Amharic word is buna.
The coffee ceremony usually follows a big meal and is normally led by the woman of the house. Fresh grass is scattered on the floor, sometimes with small yellow flowers, and incense is lit. Green beans are roasted in a pan over charcoal, and the smoking pan is carried around so guests can breathe in the aroma. The beans are pounded in a wooden mortar called a mukecha, then boiled with water in a jebena, a round-bellied clay pot with a long neck and a straw stopper. The host pours from about a foot above a tray of small handleless cups without stopping until each is full. The same grounds are brewed three times: the rounds are called abol, tona and baraka, the last meaning "to be blessed". Coffee is taken with sugar, or in the countryside with salt or a little niter kibbeh, alongside popcorn, peanuts or a slice of ambasha bread. If you decline coffee, tea is offered instead.
Gursha: The Mouthful You Give Away
One custom sums up the whole way of eating. When sharing a meal, Ethiopians may give a gursha: one diner wraps a choice bite of injera and stew and places it directly in another person's mouth. It is a gesture of closeness and hospitality, the opposite of guarding your own portion. It only makes sense in a cuisine where everyone eats from the same tray with their hands, and where the plate itself is edible.
That shared tray rests on a particular landscape. Teff thrives at the altitudes of the Ethiopian Highlands, enset bread is a staple of the southern regions, and coffee grows wild in the forests of Kaffa. The fasting calendar comes from the country's Orthodox majority, described in more detail in our guide to religion in Ethiopia, while the bean that finishes every meal has its own story in the geography of coffee's origins.