http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/CookBook/Cat/Default.aspx
Cherokee Cookbook
Kanuchi
http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/4/Page/default.aspx
Kanuchi is considered to be a real delicacy. The nuts are gathered in the fall and allowed to dry for a few weeks before the kanuchi making begins.
Fry Bread
http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/5/Page/default.aspx
Although not uniquely Cherokee, Fry Bread is a standard with most Indians. Different tribes make the bread in different ways and here is one recipe for a common Fry Bread in Cherokee communities.
Cooking
http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/9/Page/default.aspx
Cooking is an important part of life for the Cherokee woman. Not only is it necessary for life (nourishment), but it is part of the social fabric.
Thanksgiving Dinner
http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/11/Page/default.aspx
Sample of a Cherokee Thanksgiving
How Salt Was Made
http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/22/Page/default.aspx
From the Indian-Pioneer Papers, a look at how salt use to be made by the Cherokee.
How the Elders Cooked
http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/23/Page/default.aspx
From the Indian-Pioneer Papers, a look at cooking in the earlier days of Cherokee Nation.
More About Cherokee Cooking
http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/32/Page/default.aspx
More great information from the Indian-Pioneer Papers.
Barbecued Fish
http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/36/Page/default.aspx
From the historic Indian-Pioneer Papers.
Bean Bread
http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/46/Page/default.aspx
Here’s a modern recipe for a very old Cherokee food.
Bean Bread
1 cup of cornmeal
½ cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar
2 cups milk
¼ cup melted shortening
1 beaten egg
2 tbsp honey
4 cups drained brown beans
Mix all of these ingredients, except beans, thoroughly, and then fold in the beans. Pour into greased, heated pan. Bake at 450 until brown (usually 30 minutes or so)
Fried Hominy
http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/47/Page/default.aspx
Hominy was a staple food for many years, and is enjoyed today in specialty recipes such as this one.
Grape Dumplings
http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/48/Page/default.aspx
Grape dumplings are an old favorite....here’s a simple recipe to make your own.
Wild Onions and Eggs
http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/49/Page/default.aspx
The big meal of Springtime, wild onions are wild-harvested and fed to families all over Cherokee Nation in this national dish.
Wild Onions
http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/56/Page/default.aspx
Where, how and, um um good!!!
http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/48/Page/default.aspx
Grape Dumplings
1 cup flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
2 tsp sugar
¼ tsp salt
1 tbsp shortening
½ cup grape juice
Mix flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and shortening. Add juice and mix into stiff dough. Roll dough very thin on floured board and cut into strips ½” wide (or roll dough in hands and break off pea-sized bits). Drop into boiling grape juice and cook for 10 - 12 minutes.
Some Cherokee cooks continue to make their grape dumplings by gathering and cooking wild grapes, or ‘possum grapes’ instead of grape juice.
The John Howard Payne Papers, a document from 1835 where the elders were interviewed for their knowledge of the old ways, tells us that around 1800, a grape dessert was made from boiling the grapes and mashing them and then adding corn meal to make a thick consistency. This seems to be the origin of what has been enjoyed for the last one hundred years or so as “Grape Dumplings.”
How the Cherokees Made Salt
(The Indian Pioneer Papers are the product of a project developed in 1936. The Oklahoma Historical Society teamed with the history department at the University of Oklahoma to get a Works Progress Administration (WPA) writers’ project grant for an interview program. The program was headquartered in Muskogee and was led by Grant Foreman. The writers conducted more than 11,000 interviews and after editing and typing the work, the results were over 45,000 pages long. The following excerpt is from the interview of Henry Downing of Nowata.)
There is a place near Salina that has salt springs, I well remember when I was a small boy, my parents and some of the neighbors would go there every year to make salt for their year’s supply. They had three large kettles, four feet across the top and about three feet deep. They would build up a large fire under each of these kettles and fill them up with this salt water and boil it until the water was all boiled away. Then they would take out the salt that was left in the kettles. As near as I can remember we got about three or four gallons at a salt cooking, and the part I played in making this salt was to keep the fires burning for there had to be just so much fire burning all the time under each kettle and it was up to us boys to keep that fire just so.
After the old people would get the kettles all filled with water they would all gather around and smoke their pipes until the water was all boiled away and the salt ready to take out. We would get about five cooking off in a day’s work. There would be as many as twenty-five families at a time gather to make their year’s supply of salt.
I remember there were three springs very close together. Two of the springs had water that was clear, cool and good to drink. The other spring was where we got our water for the salt.
Info provided by the Cherokee Nation Cultural Resource Center please contact cultural@cherokee.org
Thanks for the links, I made a note of them, maybe I will find it again.
We never lived where there were fish or nuts, except the store bought ones.
I can’t go and check the recipes right now, I would expect there to be some that I know, as I have found some of the odd food combination’s in a Cherokee cook book before.
Mom did fry every thing, bread included.