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 it can be harvested at any time of year and survives droughts that would wipe out grain harvests, making kocho a food-security staple as much as an everyday bread.
More from Ethiopia
Part of World of Street Food — 3443 dishes from 118 countries.
Something wrong here? Tell us in the comments below.
Photo credits.