Ethiopian food

I know it's typically eaten with injera (sp) and so the bread adds a fair amount of calories (not something I'm worried about at the moment) but are the dishes cooked in a lot of oil? I know it's probably hit or miss, like with Indian restaurants or Mexican restaurants, but in general- do the dishes tend to be on the healthy side? It would seem that they are, but I wanted to get opinions from people who've had it. Also, is the injera typically fried or baked?

No one's eaten it? Seriously?

Never eaten it, but it sounds deliciousful. :D

ive had it for my bday dinner... it was.... ok.
the injera is steamed (think of a cross between soft thin pancake or sponge cake, with little flavour).. and while that may be healthier, honestly it was not that great. It was squishy tasting to me -- naan bread would be better.

I ordered this entree thing with 3 scoops of toppings on the injera. One was some dried pea stew thing. Another was lentils. The third item was some sort of cabbage salad.  My friends had ones with chicken, but it was like chopped tiny pieces of meat in the lentil stew. Everythiing looked the same, and it was all stew like (because i suppose everything is heavily beans and lentils based).

um, the scoops of stuff were nothing very interesting in my opnion. Taste is not too strong or spicy, but rather bland.

I wouldnt try it again, perhaps i had the wrong items, but none of my friends were impressed with their orders either.

oh yah one thing, ur suppose to scoop and eat everything with the injera, so they dont give you utensils (well we didnt get any...) but you'll prolly end up asking for a fork. the bread is way too soft in my opinion to effectivey "scoop" anything... 

BLAND?

Any foreign-sounding food is not ALLOWED to be bland. Or it is forever condemned.

Ethiopia, you are condemned.

Yeah, naan would be way better...spongey just sounds icky.

and some hummous.

better yet, slap on a turban and feed me indian food.

Hmm.. I love Ethiopian food, but haven't had it for years, since my college days when I was skinny without trying, so haven't ever researched the calories. I feel like as breads go, that stuff isn't too bad, and after looking at some websites I found about it, looks to be about 200 cal for a 12 inch diameter circle of it. I don't remember it seeming particularly greasy, and there were lots of bean based things... seems like a fairly healthy choice.

And as for it being bland, that must have been a terrible restaurant!

They sell packaged injera here in stores, and it is remarkably low in calories. One large (14") sheet is less than 100 calories.

Sounds good. I'm going to have to try some soon. Personally, I think spongy bread sounds yummy. :) I do love me some naan too, though. Pity it's so fattening.

I just went to an Etheopian resteraunt last night and it was great- a nice change of pace.  The bread, which is made from a grain called teff, is supposedly very good for you and relatively low in calories.  Beware any chicken dishes as they are typically prepared with a lot of butter.  Personally, my favorite was the beef dish (I forget what it was called, pardon my ignorance). 
Here's a great website I found w/ Etheopian recipes and some nutrition info.

i LOVE ethiopian food! i had it the other week with my parents.  I'm not sure if its high calorie or not but it tastes very light with the spongey bread type stuff, its mostly vegetables and ethiopians are generally not overweight so i guess its not so bad, right?

I love Ethipian and don't consider it bland at all. I don't like it when the injera is v. sour, but like the dishes a lot. Not sure if it's unhealthy, but it seems less greasy than restaurant Indian dood to me.

Those recipes were great! Thanks wingfish. I'm really looking forward to trying Ethiopian food soon. I'm not too worried about the cals now, and I'm a vegetarian so I'll definitely be ordering some of the healthier dishes. The only problem is convincing someone to go out and try it with me. :p

I adore Ethiopian food.  I've never had it bland.  In fact, I've never had anything hotter than a yemisir kik wat stew.

There is a large Ethiopian community where I live (Washington, DC) and I remember a workshop being given on the necessity of using less oil in Ethiopian food, for health reasons, and how to modify food preparation.  I wish I had attended.

I don't know if restaurants use a lot of oil, but the cookbooks that I have say to.  I make Ethiopian style greens all the time, and the recipe says to add one cup of oil for one pound of greens.  I use a quarter cup, instead.  I have found that I use 1/2 to 1/4 the amount of oil stated in most recipes.

As a side note, Ethiopian women (living in Ethiopia) are said to have lower rates of breast cancer due to their diet.  They consume lots of grains, including flax, barley (brewed into a beverage), and teff.  They don't eat many sweets, and they don't eat a lot of meat (because they are frequently fasting from meat for religious reasons).

I was really looking forward to trying Ethiopian food, but when I had it I found it was really overrated. I thought it would be very flavorful and sort of like Indian food which I LOVE because I love spices and sauces, but Ethiopian food came with this very weird very sourish spongey bread that was gross and although the vegetables (I had a vegetable platter filled with different kind of vegetable entrees and some lamb stew) were pretty good, with the bread it just ruined it. I give it a C.

hehe that's similar to my experience imperialhuntress. The bread is just not my thing, and coming from an asian backgorund im used to eating a lot of steamed bread/buns but... there is just something about that that is werid.

As for the blandness.. maybe the restaurant isnt good. I am currently residing in a small community, and there is NO Indian, Korean, etc restuaruants here but yet, there's an Ethiopian one??

BLAND?!  Ethiopian cuisine is ALL about spices and layers of flavors.  Maybe being from DC (with a huge Ethiopian community) I am spoiled.  The bread is like a spongy sourdough, FAR from bland. Most Ethiopians I know are vegetarians, so the dishes that they make for me are all savory spicy dishes, and very very healthy.  Don't give up on the Ethiopian food, people!!  Once you have a rockin' plate of it, you'll be hooked. Plus, you eat with your FINGERS!!! So fun.

Sourdough? Not the Ethiopian restaurants here. The injera is made from buckwheat flour. I didn't know this, but happen to strongly dislike buckwheat, so I recognized it right off. Afterwards we asked and sure enough...buckwheat. It's good for ya if you can stand it.

Because of the bread, I will likely never go back, but the toppings/stews were quite delicious and certainly not bland (though the two we ordered tasted very much the same). I'd like to make it at home and serve on rice instead.

EDIT: I looked it up and the traditional Ethiopian bread known as injera is a sourdough pancake made from buckwheat flour.

I have had ethipian food few times and i ahve concluded that i love thier dorowat the best!.

Its spicy and tasty and cant be low calorie.

but i love it!

I looked up a recipe for doro wat, cuz I am pretty sure that's what we had at the restaurant, and you are right it is not low-cal but certainly CAN be, with just omitting the oil or at least cutting way back. It calls for 1/4C of clarified butter or oil, that seems excessive. Also I will use boneless skinless chicken instead of whole peices with skin. It asks for like a thousand different spices to make the spice blend/ paste, amazingly I have all of them except fenugreek.

So yeah...the "bread" is fairly low-cal, considering it is steamed and very thin, but the stews are rife with clarified butter and/or oil, so I would not go too hog-wild.