Misir wat

Ingredients

• Red lentils — rinsed300 g
• Onions — very finely chopped600 g
• Berbere2 tbsp
• Garlic5 clove
• Ginger30 g
• Tomato paste1 tbsp
• Neutral oil80 ml
• Water900 ml
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Cook the onion dry in a pot for thirty minutes over medium heat, stirring, until it becomes a dark paste.

   30 min

2. 2

   Pour in the oil, add the garlic and ginger and cook three minutes.

   4 min

3. 3

   Stir in the berbere and tomato paste and fry five minutes: the mixture darkens and turns fragrant.

   6 min

4. 4

   Add the lentils, pour in the water and simmer twenty-five minutes, stirring, until the lentils fall apart.

   25 min

5. 5

   Season at the end, cook it down to a porridge-thick stew and serve with injera or flatbread.

   6 min

About the dish

Misir wat is made without butter — it is a dish for fast days, of which the Ethiopian calendar has more than two hundred. Vegetable oil replaces the spiced butter, and the flavour rests on berbere and onion.

As in doro wat, the onion is cooked dry until it disintegrates. That is the common principle of Ethiopian wots: first the onion becomes the base, and only then does anything else appear.

The lentils are not soaked. Red lentils collapse on their own within twenty minutes, and soaking only makes them watery.

Worth knowing

• — Berbere can be very hot. Start with a spoon, taste and add — there is no taking the heat back out.
• — Salt only after the lentils have collapsed: in salted water pulses soften noticeably more slowly.
• — Misir wat thickens as it cools. Loosen it with boiling water when reheating.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

420 kcal

Protein

20 g

Fat

18 g

Carbs

48 g

More from Ethiopia

• Doro wat — Chicken in a thick berbere sauce, built on a kilo of onion cooked dry until it disintegrates.