New: Weekend Brunch

WÉTU • SPRING MENU
Spring is here! NEW menu. Plant-WATHÓTHO • Game-THADÓ • To Share-WAKSÍKA THANKA • Sweet-SKÚYA • Sauces-IYÚDTHUN

NEW BOOK! by Sean Sherman

Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America

Uncover the stories behind the foods that have linked the natural environments, traditions, and histories of Indigenous peoples across North America for millennia through more than 150 ancestral and modern recipes from three-time James Beard Award-winning Oglala Lakota chef Sean Sherman.

All preorder copies from Birchbark Books will be signed by Sean Sherman.

New: Weekend Brunch

WÉTU • SPRING MENU
Spring is here! NEW menu. Plant-WATHÓTHO • Game-THADÓ • To Share-WAKSÍKA THANKA • Sweet-SKÚYA • Sauces-IYÚDTHUN

NEW BOOK! by Sean Sherman (signed copy)

Last week, the kitchen staff headed out to Battle Creek Park in St. Paul to go foraging. They carefully harvested a bunch of stinging nettle (using leather gloves of course!). Now despite the stinging hairs all along the leaves and stems and their bad reputation, there are actually many uses for nettle both edible and medicinal. 

Stinging Nettle in the community garden we are working on, Mishkiikii Gitigan.

The nettle that was harvested was then bundled with twine and hung to dry in our kitchen. We intend to use the dried nettle for teas mostly, but one of our chefs has also been working on a kombucha and made some into a powder for a tasty addition to dishes we create. 

Nettle hanging to dry in the Indigenous Food Lab.

You don’t need to dry the nettle out for it to be safe to eat. You can blanch the plant in boiling water and eat the leaves right away. The stems are also edible if still young and green, but typically just the leaves are eaten.