Quantaቋንጣ

Name: Quanta
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 3 min
Total time: 4350 min
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: Ethiopian
Ingredients: 1 kg lean beef, all fat trimmed off, cut into strips 2 cm wide; 3 tbsp berbere; 1 tbsp salt; 1 tsp korerima, ground; 1 tsp black pepper; 2 tbsp sunflower oil; 2 tbsp tej or dry red wine

Lean beef rubbed with berbere and hung to dry — the Ethiopian larder in one ingredient

Prep: 30 minutes
Cook: 3 days
Serves: 8
Region: National

Ingredients

Make

8 servings

Method

Trim every piece of fat off the beef. Fat does not dry, it goes rancid, and it is the one thing that ruins a batch
Cut the meat with the grain into long strips no thicker than 2 cm
Mix the berbere, salt, korerima, pepper, oil and tej into a wet rub
Work the rub into every surface of every strip
Hang the strips on a line in a cool, dry, airy place out of the sun, with space between them so air moves all the way round
Leave them 2 to 3 days, until they are stiff, dry to the touch and dark, and bend without any give
Store the dried quanta in a cloth bag or a sealed jar

Photographs

From the kitchen

Cool, dry and airy are all three necessary. A warm humid room will spoil the meat before it dries, so if your kitchen is either, use a dehydrator on its lowest setting instead
Trim ruthlessly. One streak of fat left on a strip will turn the whole bag rancid
It is done when it bends without giving at all. Anything still soft in the middle needs longer
Quanta was how a household kept meat before refrigeration, which is why it turns up in firfir, in shiro and eaten dry with a glass of tella

Per serving

Calories: 180
Protein: 28g
Carbohydrate: 2g
Fat: 7g

Estimates. They shift with how you make it and what you make it with.

Suitable for

gluten-free

Watch it made

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