FRY BREAD & Navajo TACOS | HARD TIMES - recipes from times of food scarcity
Greetings my beautiful lovelies. Hello, it's Emmy. Welcome back!
Today I'm gonna be making fry bread. And fry bread is used to make Navajo tacos, or Indian tacos, or Native American tacos.
And it's something that I tasted for the first time when I lived in Montana -- it's absolutely delicious!
You can find it at fairs, carnivals, pow-wows. It is amazing!
It's basically a flat bread that's been deep-fried, and it's topped with beans, ground beef, tomatoes, lettuce,
cheese -- all the things you would find on a typical taco.Or it's also served as a dessert with honey and butter,
or just with powdered sugar. So this recipe does have some history. It is attributed to the Navajo.
It was invented around the 1860s when the Navajo were forced to march
from their land on to basically internment camps. These were called the long walks.
They were forced to walk hundreds of miles and when they arrived they were given rations government rations
including flour baking powder dry milk sugar and with those things this
Recipe was invented. Fry bread. There aren't very many ingredients four to five different ingredients. I looked up a lot of different recipes
I'll put all the links down below to the videos and the blogs that I looked at and used as references
It's really really simple. There is a technique with forming the dough and of course frying it
But this will be my first time so we'll see how well I do
So first things first, I'm going to make the dough and I've got two cups of flour here
Just regular all-purpose flour 2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt a teaspoon and a half of sugar
This recipe is attributed to the Navajo but many southwestern tribes make this fry bread and it is very very popular and
Depending on what reservation you come from there are slightly different variations. A lot of measurements were just done simply by hand
just like what grandma used to do you just kind of looked and that looked right and then when you kneaded the dough it just
Felt right. So some of the recipes were just estimations just based on feel so now that that's mixed up
I'm going to use about a cup of warm water. We're back
didi
So now I've got some warm water here
It's about a cup to a cup and a quarter depending on the humidity of the day
So I'm just gonna add a little at a time
And this is what I found most interesting. You just kind of have to do it by the feel
And just work this into a dough
And you want the dough to be a little bit sticky. You don't want to necessarily knead it. Otherwise, it'll be
Tough when we fry it.
Love making dough. I love it
I'm so grateful for YouTube to be able to see what the results of the dough like what the dough is supposed to look
like
you can read recipes and they can describe them to you, but you don't get to see what
They're doing so I'm so grateful for video recipes
Okay, so I think we're pretty much there.
All right, so here's the finished dough we're gonna cover this with a dish towel and let this rest
Different recipes had different amounts of time anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes
I'm gonna kind of do the middle and do about 15 minutes. All right, see you in a bit
All right. So here are the toppings. I've got some canned sliced olives chopped red onion some sliced up iceberg lettuce
chopped tomato some cilantro
Some sour cream here is my beef that's been all cooked up
And of course some nice shredded cheese and beans as well. All right, let's check on our dough
It's been resting for about 15 minutes. So I've got a cast-iron skillet here. I've got some oil heating up
It's about 3/4 of an inch. All right, so, let's see if I can do the dough shaping technique
I'm gonna get some flour for my hands
Ball of dough is pinched off
Like this
Shaped into a ball. It's flattened, a
little bit of flour, so it doesn't stick to your hands too much and
I saw some people roll it with a rolling pin to get it flat
I'm gonna cover my rest my dough so it doesn't dry out
Just to get it out and then just start to stretch it a bit
And flatten it and then there's this great technique where you use your fist to kind of flap it back and forth
So, let's see if I can do that
So I am no expert here as it shows. This is my first time so we're going to stretch it a bit and
Letting it rest allows the baking powder to activate but it also allows the gluten
Which are the proteins that are in the flour to form and that makes the dough stretchier
so my dough is a little lumpy and shaggy, so maybe it's
Maybe it would
Be better if it rested longer
I've got a hole in it, but that's okay because we're supposed to make a hole in it. But yeah
you're supposed to do that purposely and in the videos that I saw you could see experienced hands made very round flat breads and
This is are not experienced hands. My flatbread is not round.
It's fun to do this though, this little flappy technique but it does do a great job of kind of stretching the dough out
Place it gently into the oil
Okay
Press it a little bit
Okay, it's puffing up immediately. Lovely.
Here are my beautiful breads I got five of them
and as I went along I got progressively better at shaping them and
Finding the right temperature to fry them at you have to cook them pretty fairly high temperature
I'd say medium high to even high heat and that's how you get this nice brown color and
Crispy texture. Now this is just begging to be filled with goodness
All right. So let's make the taco and add some shredded lettuce on top
Yummy iceberg lettuce. I love iceberg lettuce, add some ground seasoned beef
Some beans, got some black beans here
Chopped tomato, I'm gonna add some more lettuce
Add some more lettuce on top
Like that. Chopped tomato. Yum, yum, yum, yum.
So excited about this
some olives
and of course
The shredded cheese. Oh, yes and a good dollop of
Sour cream. Oh man, this is gonna be good
I forgot onion, red onion too - I love red onion. Okay, red onion.
Alright, will you look at this thing of beauty. I can't wait to tuck into this. Let's see...
So, at fairs and stuff,
you see people with carrying the taco on a floppy, like flimsy paper plate, and they just eat it like this.
Here we go. Itadakimasu!
Mm-hm!
As good as I remember. The bread is delicious.
It's simultaneously crispy on the outside, but chewy, but not doughy. It has this nice chew to it
And it's got the delicious aromas that come from deep-frying
It doesn't taste greasy at all and with all those toppings on top
Especially the lettuce and the tomato the crunch of the lettuce the kind of fresh juicy
tomato
makes this a lot fresher feeling and not so heavy because you've got that fried dough bottom and then you got the meat and the
Beans to make it more substantial and it's just absolutely delicious
I think one thing I would love to have on this is a little bit of guacamole
Yes, ah
Kinda makes a mess though
Speaking of messes, have you picked up your official Winston t-shirt?
You know Winston the crumb that likes to appear on my lip, yes, he has an official t-shirt be sure to pick one up
I'll put the link down below. It's only running for a limited time only so show your love for the crumb
Alright, let me eat another bite of this
Uh huh
It's good to have a fork too. Mhmm!
Let's do a sweet one. Let's have some with butter and honey
Honey toast is one of my favorite things so I don't doubt that I will love this
So let's add a little
butter to that
Or a lot of butter
To that, that's why this is gonna be good
And
Honey from my own hives. Have you seen my bee vlog videos?
I will put the link down below to my other channel where I have been chronicling my adventures in beekeeping
The blogs are actually from last year. I got really behind, but I've been taking footage of my beekeeping for this year, too
So the videos will come as well. But this is the honey that came from last fall. So
Drizzle that. Oh, my! Yes
Here we go
Mmm-hmm like every fried dough that is covered with sugar. It's delicious
Scrumptious, oh I think I got it in my hair
Mmm, the butter actually works really really nicely in that
It enhances the kind of fried-ness of the bread and then you've got just delicious honey that's drizzled all over it
It's like the best doughnut ever. It's got a more chew to it than a typical doughnut. It's not cakey at all. It's got a
Significant chew, which I really appreciate and a little bit of crispness as well
I think the key to fry bread is eating it fresh
You must eat it right after it comes out of the fryer. So you get all of that delicious crunchiness
Scrumdiddlyumptious, so I know what I'm having for lunch. What are you having for lunch?
I hope you guys enjoyed that one. I hope you guys learned something. Please share this video with your friends. Follow me on social media
So you know what videos are coming up next and pick up yourself a Winston t-shirt and I shall see you in my next video. Toodaloo,
Take care, byeee!
Get your WINSTON tee here: http://bit.ly/winstontee It's said that fry bread was invented in the 1860s by the Navajo when the were forced to relocate by the United States government and given rations of flour, sugar, salt and lard. I had my first frybread taco when I lived in Montana and today I'm recreating it so I can have it in Rhode Island, too. New videos every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday! SUBSCRIBE: http://youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=emmymadeinjapan TWITTER: https://twitter.com/emmymadeinjapan INSTAGRAM: http://instagram.com/emmymade SNAPCHAT: @emmymade FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/itsemmymadeinjapan/ OTHER CHANNEL: emmymade http://bit.ly/1zK04SJ Latest Bee Vlog: http://bit.ly/emmybeevlog13 My recipe was inspired by these: Turquiose Skies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5shGN5SjcEQ The Best Fry Bread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY3zla4dg-M Sandollar1970:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B7n1xDYX3U Authentic Fry Bread & Tacos: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=1EO8KtfA5u8 https://whatscookingamerica.net/History/NavajoFryBread.htm 2 C. flour 2 t. baking powder 1/2 t. salt 1 1/2 t. sugar 1-11/4 C. warm water Grapefruit PITH Steak: http://bit.ly/grapefruitpithsteak Canadian KitKats: http://bit.ly/canadiankitkats Agar Spherification: http://bit.ly/agarspherification Meet Winston here: http://bit.ly/winstonsfirstappearance This video is NOT sponsored. I just wanted to eat a frybread taco. "Pieces of Streets" and "Summer Nights 2" courtesy of epidemicsound.com and royalty-free Sprightly from iMovie. If you're reading this, you know what's what. Comment: "aloe vera"