What are some popular Native American dishes?

49 comments

  1. I’ve literally only had Native American food once, and I’m saying this as someone who volunteered for an extended period of time with a Tribal government.

  2. Fry bread tacos, pashofa (and honestly anything with hominy in it), three sisters soup, bison/venison steaks

  6. I find it sad that very few of us know about Native culinary traditions. I don’t even know where to start to learn or experience this.

    I live in Ohio btw.

  7. To be honest, I know little about the subject, but I would be happy to learn.

  8. I’m from New England. But a whole lot of our local cuisine is just Native cuisine from the local tribes up this way.

    Our famous [New England Clam Bake](https://newengland.com/travel/new-england/where-to-find-a-live-fire-new-england-clambake/) may as well be directly a Narragansett/Wampanoag thing.

    Same with [summer succotash.](https://newengland.com/food/succotash-recipe-with-a-history/) Natives around here called corns, beans, and squash “[the three sisters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(agriculture)),” and they naturally protect each other when grown together, so lots of dishes combine these – and people like me grow them in their gardens every year.

    Thanksgiving – the traditional one from up this way – with its cranberries and (up here wild) turkey and corn and whatnot is all pretty much native type food.

    Fry bread and corn cakes are popular – Yankees renamed the former popovers and the latter Johnnycakes. [Here is a picture of some cranberry corncakes from a Rhode Island restaurant run by Native Americans](https://ediblerhody.ediblecommunities.com/recipes/sly-fox-corn-cakes).

    I mean, idk, it’s basically our whole regional food. All the stuff we eat now. Lobsters, quahogs, hell, even the names like Quahog are Native words.

    Succotash and Squash are Narragansett words like Quahog. So is Scup and Tautog. So is Moose. As are Powwow and Woodchuck. The Narragansetts are in Rhode Island. But the Massachusetts had words we took too – like Skunk and Mugwump and Muskrat and Wampum.

    Up here all of our place names are like that. For instance, that Native restaurant I linked you to, it’s near a village named Quonochontaug – which isn’t famous for much but beaches and being Mulder’s summer home on the X-Files.

  10. The Indian Pueblo Cultural Center here in Albuquerque has a really great restaurant with a pre-colonial menu.

    In terms of sheer popularity: Feast Day stew, fruit pies and bread fresh from an Horno (Jemez Pueblo is usually where I’ve had these), and fry bread tacos at the state fair.

  11. Smoked salmon. Eaten as jerky or added to anything you want. People like it with eggs.

  13. you’re gonna find very varied dishes given the size of the U.S.

    I know Alaskan Tlingit best, which is of course a lot of sea food. smoked salmon is probably best known. Some stews and soups are also made with ocean water which provides iodine to the diet. You may also find seal oil, or whipped seal oil in some dishes as well.

  14. The BEST hamburger I ever had was on a rez in New Mexico… Laguna Burger.

  15. Like three million different seafood dishes, but especially smoked salmon since that stores nicely over winter.

    Whipped berries traditionally with seal oil but often with crisco.

    Various stews with sea greens and/or meat or fish.

    Sauted chicken of the woods.

    Steamed fiddleheads

    Various spruce tip preparations.

  17. The cafe at the National Museum of the American Indian in DC serves a rotating menu of indigenous foods—it’s one of my favorite places to eat in DC. You could probably find a menu online!

  21. The Lumbee are known in NC for lots of good food including collard sandwiches and grape ice cream!

  23. I’ve never had any Native American cuisine 🙁 I hadn’t even thought about it until this question was asked, and now it’s bothering me.

    We have so many other common restaurant themes in my hometown (Chinese, Indian, Korean, Thai, Mexican, Italian, Mediterranean)…why not Cherokee, Sioux, Lakota, etc? So strange.

  24. Kanuchi is my favorite fall soup. It’s made with hickory nuts, some folks put a little maple syrup in too. It’s definitely a comfort food..

  25. Navajo tacos. I can eat those everyday, idec. If you don’t like whole beans you can also do an alternative version that uses refried beans instead. But really adding frybread as a side to anything, or in place of things (eg. Frybread instead of burger buns), is an A+ choice. Growing up we’d frequently have chili with frybread on the side and that was easily one of my favorite childhood meals.

  26. Indian tacos! You have no idea how good they are here, think Tex Mex meets fry bread with butter and honey….OMG

  27. This all depends upon the region, we are not a singular people like French or New Yorkers. It’s like asking what are some popular European dishes, there are many varied answers.

    Frybread would probably be the most common, but will vary in consistency across the nation. I’m Mvskoke and we use self rising flour, so our bread is thicker and fairly dense but still airy inside for a bread. While I lived in AZ, the Pima type bread was thinner and not as fluffy, so it was just okay in my opinion vs what I was used to. I figure corn, squash, and regional beans are somewhat common.

    Then you’ll get into tribal and regional specifics, like salmon for NW, probably crab for NE, bison for plains, beaver, etc.

    As OK tribal with SE roots, I grew up with venison, turkey, and squirrel as main meats, then wild onion soup, sofke (a sour corn soup thing that I could never eat, but the elders loved), some weird blue dumpling things that elders loved as well, corn and bean soups were common.

  29. I’ve had some Aztec dishes, but not North American native dishes. Unless you count Navajo tacos

  30. Me and my family went to a Cherokee powwow and ate a whole bunch of fresh fry bread with honey.

    Then there’s Grits

    Baked Beans

    Cornbread

    Wild rice

  32. Wild rice is delicious and so is salmon. I like reindeer too. I am Alaskan Native and I think it’s nice you’re asking this question. If you ever get the chance, eat a frybread taco.

  33. The National Museum of the American Indian in DC has a food court with food from tribes from different parts of the country. I remember the northwest station had salmon.

  34. So I live in Omaha. The name is for an actual living and breathing tribe. And the Ponca and Winnebago are close as well. As such there is a big pow wow each fall (though COVID really screwed that one) and Omaha prides itself on the cultural native ties. I knew I had encountered some recipes pages before, and I was right. I went looking to share.

    [https://www.unmc.edu/nursing/partnerships/cultural-diversity/recipes-from-lakota-sioux.html](https://www.unmc.edu/nursing/partnerships/cultural-diversity/recipes-from-lakota-sioux.html)

    [http://omahalanguage.unl.edu/recipes/index.html](http://omahalanguage.unl.edu/recipes/index.html)

    [https://www.edibleomaha.com/online-magazine/harvest-2016/native-traditions/](https://www.edibleomaha.com/online-magazine/harvest-2016/native-traditions/)

    [https://www.poncatribe-ne.org/services/health-services/diabetes-program/recipes/](https://www.poncatribe-ne.org/services/health-services/diabetes-program/recipes/)

    [https://www.greatplainstribalhealth.org/health-promotion-and-prevention-programs/traditional-foods-161.html](https://www.greatplainstribalhealth.org/health-promotion-and-prevention-programs/traditional-foods-161.html)

  36. A lot of southern dishes have their origins in americian Indian cuisine. It’s all been mixed up now, though. Southern food is a mix of French, Indian, African, English and Irish food.

    It’s why it’s so goddamn good.

  37. Not much dishes from USA since the genocide and assimilation killed off most of the cultures. Mexico has plenty of dishes though.

    People say frybread but they didn’t have wheat here. Fry bread is more of a message because it’s what helped them survive the brutality of the colonizers. They were supposed to starve but making frybread helped them survive so now they celebrate frybread.

    You should find a place/someone that makes wojapi. Its a thick berry sauce made of chokecherries. You can dip your frybread in it or dip your Buffalo meat in it.

    If you’re ever in Denver, Colorado, visit Tocabe for some Native America cuisine. They sell great Buffalo ribs with wojapi dip.

  38. Wasna was a popular food to take on trips or when hunting, think anything youd take beef jerky to now. Its dried bison meat in a chokeberry patty with fat holding it together. It really helps to keep you going on a long trip. My mom was a Lakota woman that used to make it for us.

  39. Sofke 😋 a dish/drink from my people, the Seminole Nation.
    And you can Not leave out the “most famous bread in all of Turtle Island” and that is FRY BREAD‼️ 😁😋🥰
    Ayy!!🤣🤣

  40. This doesn’t exactly answer the question but there’s apparently a pretty decent native American restaurant in Minneapolis called “Owamni by the Sioux Chef” that makes traditional indigenous food from pre-colonial times.

  42. Turkey, corn, potatoes and tomatoes are all native to this land….. so technically all of that shit is Native American

  47. Many Native dishes have entered the wider American culinary scene, to the point where they may be widely-condsidered “Americana”: Cornbread, baked beans, clambakes, mashed squash, succotash, hominy, etc.

  48. Barbecuing started out as a Taino (native Puerto Rican) tradition, the word barbecue is a Taino loanword.

  49. Fry bread, Indian tacos, clam chowder, root beer, literally anything using chiles, corn, tomatoes, or potatoes — so it’s all over!

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