Alice Shows How To Makes Navajo Frybread

how are you doing um copacetic copacetic she's only 411. how i got this tall i don't know anyway she's here to make us some navajo fry bread when you go to a pow wow everybody makes a bee line for the fry bread now all of the tribes have different kind of fry breads but i have to be biased to say that the navajo fry bread is the best wouldn't you say mom absolutely it is okay let's take a look and just see what kind of ingredients we need to make authentic navajo fry bread okay so go ahead and go over uh this list of things we need okay over here in uh hawaii we need uh bread flour because over there in uh navajo land we use a bluebird flower oh let me show that let me show you the bluebird flower right here this is bluebird flower that there is made in cortez and this is what everybody on the navajo reservation uses so wasn't that neat that i had that here absolutely that was cool so this is next the best thing out here in the world and you need powdered milk bacon powder salt and lard i prefer morel lard myself but this is what they have here and uh what else what do you have as far as intense this lard you need lard rather than vegetable oils and things like that lard is the best thing to fry it in it it gives it that flavor right and it has to be super hot okay now tell us about some of the utensils that you have here okay right here this is me i don't use measuring cups i pull a coffee cup out and i'll i how much i'm gonna fix like if you're gonna fix three cups you want three cups of flour and two heaping teaspoons of baking powder i'm gonna do four cups so i'm gonna use three heaping teaspoons of baking powder in it and then of course you have this uh this kind of huge fork here to be able to do what with uh it's able to turn the fry bread after when it's cooking because it cooks really fast and you got good bubbles and bad bubbles and you want to pop the bad bubbles so you don't want those uh big bubbles to get out of out of whack there so yeah because they come up they come from underneath and so you got to pop them a little bit so you don't have all this big caves under now tell me what you know you said you're going to do four cups of flour right how many fry breads does that make can somebody make fried breads with two cups of flour oh yeah you can make it with two cups you'd get about uh three or four pieces of fried bread out of it yeah and another thing that you do with your fried bread i mean your your uh dough you have to really knead it well it has to be very well kneaded if you don't need it well it's not going to bubble up when you fry it okay so there was a very important clue you need to knead it well all right so let's go ahead and start mixing up here uh okay you're gonna get four cups of flour what do you put in first a flour yeah flour goes first and i just throw it in there like that okay you know what a lot of the navajos out there like uh grandma and our cousins our aunts they really don't measure their flour with a cup sometimes they use their hand don't they they do they use their palm yes they do and they're they're really really good at it yeah i make good pride bed but that was three was that three okay we're asking the camera person with that was three and she said yes that was three so yeah my son was talking to me and i'm kind of getting uh well you know you know what they say uh son like mother sound like mother okay so this is uh okay there's flowers okay just a coffee cup like that okay and now what do we got here this is a teaspoon just a regular teaspoon now drawer okay uh kitchen teaspoon and i'm gonna put three of these in because i got four cups of flour okay always use one less baking powder per cup okay in other words four cups of flour you use three teaspoons of bacon baking powder keeping keeping heaping get that keeping okay and if you got six cups of flour you're going to use five heaping okay gotcha gotcha i'm gonna use two you know that's like that's navajo math is what that is yeah navajo math we got it down man and then uh so we're putting three heaping uh teaspoons of baking powder and now we got some salt coming yeah we got salt coming and we're going like that with it okay we're going like that okay that's what we got okay wow that's uh pretty simple okay okay and next we're gonna put and i usually pour down in my hands like that so it kind of runs off it's gonna be about three though one two three okay now so you just got your hand and you just poured uh the the powder milk on there and it kind of spills over you okay that's it okay you know i have to say that the powdered milk makes it taste really good though it lasts longer it stays softer and it's really good and then when and when it's through frying there and you're through eating then you need to wrap it in plastic or something and then you can warm it back up in the microwave all right okay so now you've got water to mix in there water warm water very important right yeah so you're going to mix up the dry ingredients i can't tell you how much water okay so you're going to guess so i'm i'm putting putting some water in and i'm going to mix it okay and then i'm going to feel it you know you got a lot you got to go a lot by feeling it's kind of like making your uh yeast bread or something you know you got to feel it know what you're doing with you got to play with it yeah it's kind of like you know giving it a little love you know you got it you got to feel the love let's put it that way man it's like making cinnamon rolls you sing to it and okay ma i just want to ask you we moved to uh gallup new mexico uh you know the southern part of the it's actually the southeastern part of the navajo reservation and the novel restaurant reservation by the way is the size of connecticut it's the biggest reservation in the united states that's right the biggest reservation united states has about 300 000 navajos on it and it's located in northeastern arizona a little bit of it the edge of it goes into northwestern new mexico and the gallup new mexico area and then up in southern southeastern utah so it's a big reservation the one that we grow that i grew up on was uh you know the southeastern part of the reservation just south of galilee new mexico now i remember when i went down there uh about five years old was emma yeah okay i went down there five years old and and we lived in a shack i would say the shack was probably about 12 foot by 12 foot i mean 15 by 15 or what like that yeah real small yeah and we had a barrel going up in the middle of it where we heated it with yeah that was the stove they used to make wood stoves out of barrels they still do that today yeah the whole guns the whole guns and then so i had a barrel in there and we had uh army bunk beds for us kids there were three of us kids and then you and dad had your your little uh bed in the corner well we had a bed and and with springs and goat skins on top of it yeah goat skins uh that's usually used you know uh rather than the mattress sometimes and so uh what we did is also had a dirt floor yeah and then it had a mini kitchen too with a rock on the floor but uh the mini kitchen also had a wooden stove in it uh an old old wooden stove one of those type yeah and so you had to use it go out in the winter wintertime and get wood and you had to haul wood and get it or just or just before winter time so you had a good a lot of wood you stock up on your wood you stuck up on your wood the other thing is is that didn't have any um we didn't have any electricity and we didn't have any uh uh running water either so i remember that dad and i you know five year all about the five years old would get these little pails that were uh lard pails you know and then i had two large pails and my uh father had two full-size pails and we would walk all the way down to the uh down to the well and pump the water out and it was downhill you know it was way down there then we had to carry it up and put it in a bigger barrel it was down in a perking and could you explain a perky to them okay a perky is like uh when it's it's like a ditch is all it is you know the water the rain water makes these ditches and over there we call them perky so the well was in the perky we went down and we pumped it and and sometimes dada would chase us kids down there to the well to uh you know have us take a bath and under the water the water it was cold and so that was our early life there but also that was a time when mom started to learn how to make fry bread and so that's why i want to bring this up because when you started making fry bread could you tell us about that first experience of making fried bed and learning how to do it well dad told me what to put in it but i didn't know what to do with it he says to mix it up and i did but i had to go down and watch grandma before i could really do it and i watched how she did it well i remember what you used to do is you used to get you know how they uh they pat the bread out you know and kind of like uh you know between two hands they pat it out and make it round well i remember that you used to have a rolling pin and you would roll the pin you would roll the dough out flat as flat as you could and you would cut it into triangles yes and then it would pop up really nice it was like a sopopia but it was really not you know so that's how you learn and it takes some effort but you've been doing it for centuries now and now you got it down and i tell you what uh the way that the navajos make fried bread the different ants and you know ants and and also grandmas they all have a different there there's a different taste to each one of their fry breads and but they're all good they have their own signature on it everybody makes it a little slightly different but it's delicious nonetheless so everybody's got their signature now in window rock arizona that's where they have the navajo nation fair every year in window rock they have a fry bread contest and tell us about you can tell us who wins the fried bread contest all the time mom i do no you wish in your dreams [Laughter] i think people would find this absolutely amazing of course you did mom of course you did i think people would find this absolutely amazing but who generally wins the frey break contests out there no you won't believe this it's no teenage no no it's the men all those men the men the men are always winning the friday contest over there at the navajo nation fair because they paid them off i could never figure that out i don't know any men that makes a fry bread but they there's some out there and they're always winning those contests out there at the window rock uh yeah okay so you're kneading the bread right now or the dough and you're pulling it okay turning my bowl okay so you're looking for a certain consistency right right okay and so when you pull it from the bowl it kind of it's kind of sticky right but but then it gets less sticky is that what we're looking for literally okay trying to trying to to get that stickiness down now you see how often would you say that navajos eat fry bread everywhere oh my gosh do they eat it every day i would say so you know what grandmas and aunties out there in navajo country because they're pulling the dough all the time man they got some mussels you don't want to arm wrestle those those those those people they also make um navajo tacos i mean not navajo tacos what i'm trying to say tortillas tortillas yeah is it made the same way as you would uh you know the milk fry bread or is there pretty much the same way yeah they probably put a little bit of a lard into the mix well i just want to you know i've been to various powwows and i've tried different fried breads from the different tribes and everybody they're all making their own fried bread in different ways and every like i said everybody goes to you know it's a bee line to the fried bread stand but um i have to say the navajo fry bread is absolutely delicious and i'm sure glad that you came all the way from the mainland to cook us some fry bread and show our audience here just uh how to make a navajo fry bread it is absolutely and once you start making it and you got a large family you can't keep one piece on the because they keep grabbing it well you know you know how we eat it it's like we don't just grab a piece we kind of tear at it yeah yeah you pick through the pile yeah you pick through the pile and you tear and you know it's like which one's the best you will see that here shortly okay so after you knead the the bread i mean the dough uh do you have to let it sit for a while or what goes on i found out here with your bread flour we need to let it sit for for maybe 20 minutes okay and then we're going to deep fry it in this grease okay so we have we have the lard over here and then when you're cooking in lard in a pan like this uh how hot does it have to be you gotta you got to see the smoke rising out of it okay so you have to see the smoke right is that out of it then you know it's hot enough okay so what we're going to do is we're going to pause it here and we're going to get the pan ready to go and next time you see it it'll be nice and hot and mom will be patting out fry bread okay okay as you can see the pan is hot and the grease is smoking and we have our little fan over here to keep it you know you know so it doesn't smoke the whole kitchen up and we've already done some tests on the fry bread we did a uh the first test just to make sure that the grease was hot enough and also to make sure that when you were patting out the uh the fry bread it was the right consistency but you had to go back and you had to knead it again because of what it was kind of tearing yeah it was kind of yeah so you have to knead it really good you don't want it to tear on you right so when i was kind of tearing you went back and needed now it's kind of stretchy so when you start to make the fry bread what are you doing right now you're balling it you took it off here and now i'm gonna i'm rolling in how much do you know how to pull off of there yeah i would say yeah like that can you see that it's like a ball a lot small baseball maybe yeah it's kind of like a it's kind of like a big dumpling isn't it i'm going to go and i'm patting it out like this getting it down then i'm going to go work it like this you're stretching it too stretching it as i'm going and i'm also i'm taking it turning in a circle as i'm going and you're stretching the outer edges uh right i'm stretching the outer edges making a little bit bigger okay while you're doing that i also wanted to point out the fact that when we were you know without electricity when i was growing up we used kerosene lamps and uh also we used kerosene to start fires although that's not a good idea because one time i i burned my eyelashes by doing that because it went poof and my eyelashes went uh scared mom half to death and it scared mom after death so uh that's not advice you just want to start a fire with newspaper and and you know matches okay so now you are patting it out okay you're patting it out i'm turning it in a circle as i'm going you probably can't see that but that's what i'm doing yeah you're going so fast mom i can't see it so it's it's turning in a circle as i'm as i'm going some people pat it out flat-handed i use my knuckles okay okay yeah i noticed that they start out some of that a lot of novels start out with knuckles and then they open their hands and start as it gets bigger but i'm clumsy so i don't do that okay well you know fried bread yeah i just want to say that clumsiness runs in the family by the way because your grandkids have a massive amounts of it but okay i'm stretching this out as you can see and i'm turning her ground okay and we will notice that she's stretching it out but it's kind of like all together it almost looks like pizza like a pizza dough doesn't it yeah you know when they do the pizza thing you get it real thin okay and you keep going like that around around round round now what as she's doing this i'm going to also just talk a little bit about navajo language i would call my mother in navajo i would call her shema shama means my mother so if i was to say bima that means their mother if i was to say nama that means your mother so at the beginning of something like mother you can then say you can point out whose mother it is so shimma and then also you know everybody says aloha here so the way we say uh you know hello in navajo is yate and then also when we we say a gona means goodbye but the word for fry bread is like this go ahead say it gosh say that again that needle guys don't need legacy is how you say fry bread in navajo i wanted to say bless you anyway um okay so is it the right size right now yeah it's just right and look how thin it is it's kind of like pretty thin there kind of like the consistency of pizza dough okay she's gonna put in hot grease okay like that oh you can hear it it's frying okay what are you doing the bubbles yeah the bad bubbles that are coming up from underneath now what do you call it why do you why do you call it bad bubbles because coming up from underneath these ones like this are called good bubbles like that on the top yeah when they're looking like that they're good bubbles okay good bubbles and bad bubbles now there it is there's the other side of the fry bread that looks very good yes it is very good i made it so how long how long how long do you how do you know when to flip it oh yeah it doesn't take long it's done okay it's done now you've seen how long it took for that to get done it's done about half a minute no half a minute so there's one fry bread right there so uh that's uh that's what it looks like you can see ouch well we're going to be nibbling on that fry bread here in a moment we'll bring the rest of family when you create a few more fried breads here mom and i want to thank you very much for coming all the way to hawaii to make fried bread for us and our audience here and show them how navajo fried bread is made and then also i wanted to say that maybe next time there's a powwow here on the big island maybe they can then maybe they can uh you know pay her way over here to be at the fried bread stand with my sister and they could be making fried bread all day oh yeah you're doing good yeah you'll be doing good he'd be enjoying it also who knows maybe some navajo tacos too you those are delicious darn good well thank you mom for coming and we're going to enjoy our fry bread here in just a minute and but i want to thank everybody for watching native ways and uh i'm going to say i'm going to say hug a wound and now oh she's going to say it going and i'm going to say it going out too thank you and uh and we're going to enjoy the fry bread thank you okay we have the begay clan here uh the begay kids and my mom here and also a friend auntie janice tillian from the mainland and we're all going to enjoy fry bread go ahead and dig in there some people eat fry bread with salt some like you know sprinkle salt on it and some of them will also eat fry bread uh with honey on it and uh or they could just actually grab the fry bread and use it and you know scoop up some beans or scoop up some potatoes and uh so so everybody's enjoying their little fry bread there you go ma we're tearing it apart here we go mmm good oh delicious delicious yeah if i were a judge i'd rate this uh five star which is the most you could get thank you very much cheyenne thank you thank you oh it is so good yum yum where's mine oh there she goes

Channel: Apachewolf

Views: 335,194

Keywords: Navajo, fry bread, hawaii, big island, native american, chip begay, apachewolf, frybread, how to make

Id: oB--sSyWCuk

Length: 20min 19sec (1219 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 18 2011