Special | 3m | Video has closed captioning.
Sumac berries lend themselves to use in a lemony-earthy flavored spice, or use them immediately to make a tangy and refreshing beverage. Chef Nico Albert (Cherokee Nation) is a self-taught chef, caterer and student of traditional Indigenous cuisines based in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Aired: 11/05/18
Problems Playing Video? | Closed Captioning
(gentle instrumental music) - So they're gonna be like lemonade?
- Mm-hm, it's gonna be kind of tangy, kind of sweet and it'll be kind of light pink from the red color of the berries.
- [Chloe] Ooh, light pink, my favorite color.
(Nico laughs) - My name is Nico Albert, I'm a Cherokee Nation citizen and I'm a chef here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Today, I'm taking my step-daughter Chloe to an urban wilderness area and we're gonna go pick some sumac to make Indian lemonade.
It's incredibly important to pass these recipes and these food traditions down to future generations.
Food is so strongly tied to memory.
When you sit down at a table and you eat certain foods, you can remember those foods that you ate as a child.
And these foods that we're making are memories from the generations before us and they'll carry on to generations in the future.
(light-hearted percussive music) I picked this wild sumac today to make what we call Indian lemonade or sumac lemonade.
The Cherokee people are originally from the Eastern Woodlands area.
With the Trail of Tears, they were removed to Oklahoma, which at the time was Indian territory.
They were put into a new land where they were not finding the same plants that they were accustomed to.
But there are still some similarities in what you can find in the wild here in Oklahoma, one of those things is sumac.
So the outside of this berry, has a red shell that has a little bit of a fuzz on it, and that has this really tangy astringent kind of flavor.
And so when you soak it with water, it creates this beautiful, tangy, refreshing drink.
(light-hearted percussive music) (light-hearted percussive music) (water splashing) And I'm just sweetening this with a little bit of honey.
And this'll take a little bit of the edge off the really tart flavor that these berries add.
(spoon clanging) (water burbles) (water burbles) (light-hearted percussive music) And that's sumac lemonade.
(ice rattles) Yeah, that's good.
Okay, here ya go.
Alright, cheers.
Sumac lemonade.
(Chloe giggles) (light-hearted percussive music)
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