BIPOC Portraits: Ethiopian Foodie (An Interview with Helen Mebrate)

BIPOC Portraits is a series in which Best of Vegan contributors Val & Mani Latifi of Plant-Based Passport profile one BIPOC vegan creator each week over the course of 16 weeks, to shed light on the unique challenges BIPOCs face in making the decision to embrace veganism. For BIPOCs, the prevailing narrative that veganism is a white-dominated movement can often mean a perceived loss of cultural identity. The hope of this profile series is to make veganism a little less lonely for BIPOCs and to give courage to vegan-curious BIPOCs out there. In the fourteenth installment of BIPOC Portraits, Helen Mebrate of Ethiopian Foodie shares her journey to veganism as an Ethiopian-Brit. She also provides a delicious recipe for Vegan Nitter Gibbeh.

[The acronym BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color]

Helen Mebrate works in the non-profit sector in London, UK. Helen transitioned to veganism after spending most of her life as a vegetarian. In August 2016, she and her husband watched What the Health, and this inspired their decision to go fully plant-based. Her favorite thing about being vegan is that it allows her to be creative in the kitchen. This diet also provides her an opportunity to eat a ton of Ethiopian dishes, as there are so many dishes that are already vegan. Besides cooking and creating content for @ethiopianfoodie, Helen enjoys looking after her house plants, listening to music, and visiting new places. Currently, she’s working on her second ebook, which will contain about 10 to 12 fully plant-based Ethiopian-inspired recipes. She hopes to make it available soon. She is also working on adding new spice blends to her online shop, Amaarech.

Food Stories: Vegan Nitter Qibbeh (Ethiopian Spiced Butter) — Vegan Nitter Qibbeh (Ethiopian Spiced Butter). Click on the photo for the full recipe.

When you first went vegan, did you see the vegan community as diverse? Did you see yourself as having a place in the vegan community as a BIPOC?

Ethiopian cuisine has a lot of vegan dishes. Coming from this cultural background, I didn’t really go out to look for a vegan community. Once I joined social media, I did notice that a lot of the vegan content being shared was based on non-Western cuisines, which motivated me to share more of my own culture.

Ethiopian cuisine has a lot of vegan dishes. Coming from this cultural background, I didn’t really go out to look for a vegan community

Did you have any fears or reservations about going vegan? Did you feel like you might lose part of your cultural identity in your transition to veganism?

Absolutely not! Much of the food I grew up eating was already vegan, so it was easy. In fact, going vegan has given me the opportunity to cook and eat more Ethiopian food.

Did you worry about how your friends and family would react to your decision to go vegan? And how did they react?

Not at all. Everyone was accepting and respected my decision.

[Cooking vegan] is like learning another language: you have to try to think in that language,—however limited you may be—rather than constantly translating the things you already know

Did you have challenges finding vegan substitutes to make your cultural dishes? What substitutes did you make?

To begin with, I was never a huge meat eater so I didn’t have any issues with that. I am also not a huge fan of substitutes in general, although I do enjoy having a vegan burger every now and then. My approach to cooking doesn’t begin with me wanting to transform a meat dish into a vegan dish. It’s like learning another language: you have to try to think in that language,—however limited you may be—rather than constantly translating the things you already know.