Injera is the national dish of Ethiopia and Eritrea and central to any meal of our meals. It’s a flatbread, an eating utensil, and the plate itself! The meal is over when the entire “tablecloth” of injera is gone. Utensils are optional.
How to eat! Pieces of injera are used to pick up bites of entrées and side dishes.
- Tear a strip of injera off with your right hand
- Hold it with your fingers and thumb
- Grab several pieces of food with it
- Eat, enjoy, repeat
What’s in it? Injera is a sourdough-risen gluten-free flatbread with a slightly spongy texture. It’s traditionally made of tiny, iron-rich teff seeds ground into flour. To make injera, teff flour is mixed with water. The fermentation process is triggered by adding ersho, obtained from previous fermentations. The mixture is then allowed to ferment for an average of two to three days, giving it a mildly sour taste. The injera is baked into large, flat pancakes. The production of teff dates back a few thousand years. Teff production is limited to certain middle elevations with adequate rainfall, and, as it is a low-yield crop, it is relatively expensive for the average household. Here’s a recipe from the Food Network.
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