South Dakota Cuisine: Recipes

Features South Dakota Cuisine: Recipes

Every state sets a unique table illustrating the history of its people.
South Dakotas table is little known, which makes it even more intgriguing.About South Dakota foodways"Following the discovery of gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota in the mid-1870s, prospectors, and merchants swept into the state with visions of quick wealth...One of the main problems of the gold seekers was food...The basis of much of the food was the hog...Slung in a crate beneath a covered wagon or waddling, grunting, and rooting behind the slow-moving oxen on the wagon train, the hog became the staple diet of the prospectors.
After slaughtering, the meat was salted down in barrels or smoked.
Although food was of vital importance, there was not a great deal of care in its preparation.
Anyone who could soak beans and fry bacon was a cook, until a more profitable means of making money came along.
The food was monotonous.
The menus did not vary and consisted of fried bacon and beans, corn bread in various forms, and sourdough bread...The original cattle brought to South Dakota were rangy longhorns from Texas...In the late 1800s a Scottish accent was all that was needed as collateral for a mortgage to start a ranch and raise cattle in South Dakota.
Along with the Scots came their cattle--Scottish Highlanders, Aberdeen Angus, and white-faced Herefords.
Many returned to Scotland as meat...the miners favorite meat continues to be pork.
Pork roast with baked sweet poratoes and a rhubarb pie...The South Dakota homesteaders at the turn of the cuentury subsisted primarily on potatoes, plus salted pork, and whole wheat bread.
If they had a cow, they also had milk, butter, and cheese to add to this diet.
Water was often scarce...Coffee breaks were the norm twice a day for the Scandinavian families...At mid-monrning and mid-afternoon the women carried steaming coffeepots and baskets of almond cakes, spice cookies, and yeast crullers out to the men in the fields.
The Swedes introduced rutabaga to this country, and in South Dakota it is still cooked with apples and brown sugar...The most exotic game bird in South Dakota is the Chinese ring-necked pheasant.
It was imported from China in the 1890s and became the state bird of South Dakota...The birds are roasted with salt pork, braised with a tangerine stuffing, or cooked in a casserole with onions and mushrooms...For centuries the Arikaras Indains cultivated corn, melons, beans, and squash...farming was not extensive in South Dakota until an agricultural population began settling the Indian lands in the southeast."Here you can find such recipes of South Dakota Cuisine:
Spiced Pumpkin SeedsBaked Sweet PotatoesButtermilk SyrupGlazed Almond Bundt CakePeach KuchenCabbage BurgersHoney Vanilla Ice CreamRoast Leg of LambSpice Cookies with Crystallized GingerRoasted Root Vegetables With Apple JuiceApricot Danish Coffee CakeSpinach Cantaloupe Salad with MintIndian Tacos with Yeast Fry BreadSweet PotatoesGourmet Pumpkin PieStreusel KuchenTims Lamb StewDream Bars IIRutabaga CasserolePheasant Breast Stuffed with Apples in a Cider Vinegar and Prune Sauce