Misir Wot
I first tried misir wot when I lived in Los Angeles for college back in 2012 or so. LA truly lives up to its reputation of being a food paradise. I have a love/hate relationship with the city but I am truly thankful to have lived there since I got to try sooo many different cuisines and types of food I probably never would've tried otherwise (hello, Persian ice cream, my beloved).
I had never tried Ethiopian food before but heard from some classmates that there were some really great restaurants along Fairfax Ave in LA's Little Ethiopia neighborhood. I took the bus to Messob after class one day to try it out and ordered doro wot (a chicken dish) and misir wot (a red lentil dish). It was my first time trying not just dishes with the Ethiopian spice blend called berbere, but also...lentils. In general. Yeah, I never had tried lentils until my 20s lol. I'm very glad that my first time trying lentils was misir wot though! I used to think that no meal could be complete without meat but the spicy, hearty dish made me fall in love with legumes and helped me realize that vegetarian food can be so, so delicious. Nowadays, lentils feature heavily in my current diet! Both were served with injera, a sour, spongy flat bread that acted as both plate and utensil. The waitress had to teach me how to eat it since I wasn't sure what to do haha.
For the rest of college and after graduating, I thought about both the doro wot and the misir wot frequently. I happened upon a berbere spice blend in Whole Foods not long after moving to SF and immediately bought it. It was a great spice rub for chicken and I made it frequently, complete with hardboiled egg. It was delicious. I lived in the Sunset neighborhood and there was a restaurant there called New Eritrea Restaurant. Eritrea borders Ethiopia and has very similar food. I would eat there when I had the extra money and would order their tumtumo which was good and similar to the misir wot but the lentils I had from Messob just had a different level of flavor and heartiness. (Their other dishes were quite good though and I tried shiro for the first time there and likewise fell in love!)
I was a very enthusiastic but inexperienced home cook by the time I was living in SF but I was still very daunted by cooking lentils from scratch. I was scarred by a sad attempt at replicating it which involved boiling dry (and old) lentils for what seemed like forever and dumping in some berbere. The resulting dish was so bland and weak and disappointing that I put off learning how to properly prepare lentils and cook with them for years and years.
I later moved down to the Peninsula which was and still is sadly lacking in Ethiopian food. I once took Caltrain to get dinner with a friend expressly to eat at a decent Ethiopian place in San Francisco so I could get my misir wot fix. It took over an hour but it was worth it (even if it still didn't measure up to my memories of Messob). However, my husband's cousin told us about an Ethiopian restaurant in San Jose called Zeni and I jumped at the chance to try it, hoping that their misir wot would be delicious and I wouldn't have to wait for our annual sojourn to Los Angeles to satisfy my craving. As luck would have it, Zeni's misir wot was delicious!
We ate at Zeni several times until COVID hit. My husband and I stopped eating out so frequently and I began cooking at home so much more. We lessened our weekly grocery trips and I stocked up on shelf stable goods, including some dried chickpeas and dried lentils after their canned variations became scarce at the store. I resolved to learn how to properly cook these staples to both keep myself entertained and to save money after hearing about how lentils and beans were such a cheap source of protein. Now a more experienced home chef at that point, I learned that chickpeas and lentils are not that complicated to prepare with proper soaking and the InstantPot which had become my constant companion in the kitchen made quick and consistent work of them. I later learned that red lentils cook quite easily on the stove top and that I had a particularly old and bad batch of lentils that ill fated time I tried cooking them all those years ago.
Earlier in the pandemic, I found out about an Ethiopian spice shop in Oakland called Brundo and happily ordered their berbere, niter kibbeh (a flavorful spiced, infused ghee), and other spices to follow along with some recipes they had posted. I first tried their shiro recipe which was delicious. After I tried their recipe for misir wot, I couldn't believe how flavorful it had turned out! It was so delicious that I cooked it over and over again until I ran out of the niter kibbeh. I tried cooking it again with just regular ghee but it just didn't taste the same. I ordered niter kibbeh a couple more times after that but it became cost prohibitive after a while. I placed misir wot and my Ethiopian cooking dabblings on the backburner while I learned how to cook some Indian dishes.
Since Indian cooking relies so heavily on ghee and spices, I figured I would gain some experience with them and maybe make my own niter kibbeh in the future. Luckily, plain ghee is much easier to source in my area (thanks, Costco!) as well as Indian spices thanks to my local Indian grocer. Over the past couple of years, I also learned the importance of using whole spices, smashing and mincing your own garlic or making a garlic paste, toasting spice blends and blooming them in hot ghee or oil to bring out the full flavor, not being afraid of hot peppers and learning to appreciate the actual flavor of the pepper rather than just seeing them as a source of spiciness, and sweating the shit out of onions and tomatoes to create a very flavorful base. I also got to familiarize myself with lots of different spices that I had never really cooked with before like cumin seeds, coriander seeds, cloves, star anise, fenugreek, caraway seeds, green and black cardamom, turmeric, etc.
This past week, I found myself with some leftover Pomi tomatoes in a carton that needed to be used up and I felt my misir wot cravings come back. I knew then...that it was time. I had bookmarked the Daring Gourmet's misir wot and niter kibbeh recipe a couple of years ago and decided to finally give it a shot. Luckily I had all the things I needed from my last Brundo order or already stocked in my kitchen. I used up the last of my ghee jar to make a cup and a half of my very own niter kibbeh. I followed the Daring Gourmet's niter kibbeh recipe exactly, save for substituting a shallot for a quarter cup of onion, and simmered the mixture on the stovetop for 90 minutes. It turned out insanely flavorful. My husband kept commenting on how delicious our apartment smelled while I was making it. A commenter on the recipe mentioned that it was amazing on toast and I am looking forward to trying it out.
I made a double batch of the Daring Gourmet's misir wot recipe and also referenced Brundo's recipe again as well (which actually doesn't include tomatoes!). I added in a couple of minced jalapenos to the sauteeing onions too since I had them in the fridge but otherwise followed the recipe pretty closely, maybe adding a little less than the recommended tomato paste amount since I didn't want it too tomato-y. It turned out incredible. My experience in the kitchen has really paid off since even the last time I cooked misir wot. The pre made niter kibbeh from Brundo is delicious but nothing really beats making it (or anything in general) from scratch. Is it labor intensive? Well, yes! But it's so worth it. The depth of flavor from the spices and the niter kibbeh are the foundation of the dish, the sweetness from the red lentils and the tomatoes and the body that the tomatoes and tomato paste add create such a hearty, comforting dish that would be delicious with the traditional injera, with naan, with a grain like barley, or my favorite, on toast with a fried egg on top.
I'm glad I can revisit and improve upon cooking a dish that I keep returning to over the past 12 years or so. I actually never realized how many fond memories I have regarding misir wot in my adult life until typing up this post. I do feel so lucky to have lived in cities that have such diverse foods and cultures like LA and SF and I am grateful to have the time and means to research and replicate these recipes in my own home kitchen. I'm looking forward to preparing this dish for company now that I have tested the recipe and I hope that anyone who happens upon this post gives cooking it or at least trying misir wot a chance if you ever get the opportunity to eat at an Ethiopian place. This formerly non-adventurous, former carnivore gives it their seal of approval!
PS I highly recommend ordering from Brundo Spice Company. They are Ethiopian woman owned and I appreciate their commitment to ethically sourcing high quality spices and ingredients and they make trying out Ethiopian recipes very accessible to newbies (like me!). I also love that they are located in the Bay Area since I love shopping small and local whenever possible. (This is not sponsored in any way, I just really like them lol)