Prairie Recipes

 

Prairie Recipes

By Collette

Most Native American tribes have developed recipes utilizing food and animal products acquired locally. Buffalo was the main source of protein for the Great Plains tribes. The following include simple recipes with buffalo meat the Osage Indians developed.

Osage Strip Soup

3-4 pounds of buffalo meat, preferably from the rump

Taking the buffalo meat, follow the grain with your knife and cut meat into strips as thick as one’s thumb. Cut into one and a half to two inch strips. Wash the meat. Put into a kettle and cover with cold water, but no more than one inch over the meat. Take a ladle and mash the meat. Place the kettle over the campfire and bring to a boil. Boil for 45 minutes to one hour. Serves 12 or so.

Osage Pounded Meats

Roasted buffalo meat
Chopped pecans
Honey

Cut roasted buffalo meat into strips. Pound strips until as fine as meat that has been run through a grinder. Add pecans and honey; shape mixture into small balls.

The final recipe uses yankopin which was a water lily root. It is difficult to find them today because Indians liked them so well the sources were depleted.

Osage Yankopin

The roots look like long, slender sweet potatoes with seeds shaped like small round chestnuts. Large quantities of yankopin root were pulled up in the fall and either eaten raw or boiled. It was often dried. The seeds were collected at this time and either consumed raw or dried for later eating.

When processing for drying, cut the roots into one to two inch pieces. String on leather thongs with up to thirty pieces per strand. Hang the strands to dry on wooden racks used for drying meat. To prepare to eat dried yankopin, boil in water until tender and add salt.