Fermented Enset Bread · Gurage-Sidama Staple
Kocho
Photo: Richard Mortel / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0
Despite its name, enset is not a banana at all — it's inedible as fruit, and its value comes entirely from the starchy pulp inside its trunk and underground corm.
Kocho is a dense, slightly sour flatbread made from the pulped and fermented stem and corm of the enset, or false banana, plant, buried and left to ferment for months before being baked on a griddle.
Why it's made this way: Enset is the backbone crop of Gurage and Sidama agriculture, prized because a single plant can feed a family for years and survives droughts that would wipe out grain harvests, making kocho a food-security staple as much as an everyday bread.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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