- There are really obsessed people who take all these pictures
(man laughs) of their food
and then playing with it
to have it look. - Got to get
the perfect ‘gram, man.
- Right,
#ThrillistMadeMeDoIt.
(upbeat music)
Rice is nice.
It's the world's most common food staple
and while this glorified grass eating is foundational
to hundreds of cuisines in all four hemispheres,
the ingredient by itself is rarely a celebrity on the plate,
which is why we came to a place where it is,
The Star of the North: Minnesota.
Now the Land of 10,000 Lakes is also the unofficial
American capital of wild rice, a naturally occurring
aquatic grass that's knocked, finished, and sold
by Native Americans in canoes whose ancestors have been
doing more or less the same thing for generations.
Now traditionally families from Bemidji to Albert Lee
have come together over bowls of home cooked wild rice
soup and they definitely still do.
But more recently it's also become a go-to hyper local
ingredient for Minnesotan chefs, brewers, and artisans
that are adding dimension to the state's hotdish
and Jucy Lucy food pedigree.
And while legit Minnesota wild rice is expensive,
its role as an edible throughline that connects
Minnesota's pristine past to its modern culinary future
just can't be understated.
Which if you think about it, is pretty wild.
- This has been a way of life for our people for years,
hundreds of years.
- From Minneapolis, we drove north, way north
to meet up with members of the White Earth Ojibwe tribe,
who consider wild rice sacred.
On the reservation, only tribe members are allowed
to harvest it and always by hand.
- My name is Selim Wadena, better known as Sonny Wadena.
We're on Lower Rice Lake area of Rice Lake, Minnesota,
located on the White Earth Indian Reservation.
Our people come from the east, migrated from there.
So when our people decided to come this way, it was because
they were told.
You'll know when to stop traveling west when you get
to where the food grows on the water.
Wild rice, we call it Mahnomen.
It was a gift to our people and that's the way we see it.
The knocker, so he's pulling the rice into the boat.
He's trying to respect the rice and.
- You don't want to break the stalks.
- You don't want to break the stalks, you don't want
to knock the heads off.
- So I'm pulling the rice in and I'm just hitting it,
just scraping it off a little bit, getting it in the boat.
His main responsibility is keeping me busy in the rice
and he's looking for the rice while I’m here.
- And I got to watch how he's knocking because if the rice
ain't over the boat, there's no point in hitting it
so I got to make sure the boat's under the rice.
- That's one of his responsibilities for being a poler.
You got to have clean rice when we sell it, no reeds
in there.
And we try to leave all the rice worms we can.
I guess it helps it somehow.
- No, not at all.
(men laugh)
Adds flavor. - Flavor!
This is kind of tough, tough.
A lot of guys wouldn't do it.
We're losing more ricers each year, but we're trying
to get the younger generation doing it.
That's a tough one.
We have the gaming systems, the smartphones,
and here on White Earth reservation, we have a big drug epidemic.
- Yeah, there are lot of things that are sort of working
to draw the youngest generation away from traditions
like this.
- If we incorporate it in our younger generation
so they can keep it going.
We figure we're not going to be out here forever (laughs).
- we've been lucky that we do have bumper years, these last
few years here.
There was a time where we had
an abundance of finished wild rice sitting on our shelves
and now that we can market it and bring in revenue,
we can't keep in on the shelves,
you know? _ Yeah.
- The experience of waking up early in the morning
in that part of Minnesota, taking the canoe through
the water, knocking the wild rice into the boat
is such a beautiful thing.
- Our journey continued to the Minneapolis kitchen
of a Minnesota super fan who knows a thing or two
about local ingredients.
You might recognize him.
How are you? - I'm great, how are you?
- Thanks for having me.
What do we got going on today?
- Oh my gosh.
Well, fried rice.
- Andrew Zimmern is a culinary explorer
for the Travel Channel.
It's literally his job to travel the world eating
its delicacies and for the last three decades,
he's called the Twin Cities home.
- I'm endlessly pimping everything that's Minnesota.
I think we have so much undiscovered stuff going on.
The wild rice is one of the most important
elements in First Peoples culture here in Minnesota.
This is something that grows naturally, that has sustained
peoples for thousands of years.
You know, let's see what else that we can do with it.
This is my sachet.
I've got some ginger and garlic and scallion in there
and when we cook our wild rice, I'm going to add
that to the pot along with some rice wine
and a little bit of soy so that we get some of that flavor
in the rice itself as well.
We'll throw in our hot chilies.
Those are hot and dried Szechuan chilies.
I like putting the ginger
right into the bottom there.
A little bit of pork for this because we're making
a roast pork fried rice.
My cooking wild rice through a Chinese prism
is just as valid as
a White Earth band of Ojibwe chef cooking this dish
just as a Chinese chef cooking this dish.
I think we need to shine bright lights on this
and illuminate it because it's fantastic
and wonderful and I think the more people that are
making this, the better. - Yeah.
Though cooking is hardly the only thing you can do
with wild rice.
Minneapolis's booming craft beer scene has created
a different demand for the ingredient, a drinkable one.
- I'm Derek Taylor with Lakes & Legends brewing company.
- Andrew Dimery, head brewer.
- We felt we had an opportunity to brew a lot
of different beers using local ingredients.
We start with those ingredients and built the beers
around those and wild rice was on the top of the list.
The farm can coach Andrew on how to treat that wild rice
to make sure the flavors come out.
- It's more of a relationship and that's something
- Absolutely. - That I feel like
you guys benefit not just from a high quality product,
but you feel like you're also getting the insights
that you otherwise just wouldn't have
access to. - Exactly.
- Yeah. - Oh, definitely.
- You get to know the farmers, you kind of feel
the heartaches that they feel if they have a bad yield
or that season, but you share in the good years as well
with them, but you really get to know them
on a personal level.
- To see their face light up when they have a beer,
it's almost a two become one (laughs).
I just made the beer, but they grew the ingredient.
- There must be a sense of responsibility that you feel
working with the ingredient.
- Oh yeah, yeah. - To certain people
in the state, it's a sacred ingredient.
- It's almost like, you definitely respect
ingredients more.
The farmers went through all the work in growing it
and then me, I'm just trying to preserve it
for a little bit longer.
- As it finishes, definitely nuttiness,
definitely earthiness.
And then like, a little bit of citrus.
I would definitely consider it a food beer.
- That's Joe, editor in chief of Growler Magazine
which chronicles food and drink culture in Minnesota.
He showed up to the brewery with a very special
Minnesota snack.
So where is this from?
- Galactic Pizza in Minneapolis.
- How?
What's this got on it? - It's got Minnesota bison,
Minnesota mozz, homemade red sauce, morel mushrooms,
and of course wild rice.
- I've never had wild rice, any kind of rice on a pizza,
much less wild rice with Minnesota, with Minnesota bison.
- So that's what it is, toasted wild rice.
- Yeah, it's amazing.
I love it.
It's like a hearty slice of pizza.
- When craft beer went bananas here, everybody wanted
IPAs, everyone wanted the standards and everyone wanted
to measure breweries by those.
- The gatekeepers. - Kind of standards, right?
Since then, we've had a lot of people
start to focus more on individual styles, niches,
and things like that in the community.
- So as this, the brewing industry and other
broader culinary scene in Minnesota expands, there's going
to be a demand for higher velocity access
to ingredients and higher volume of ingredients.
Wild rice is diametrically opposed to what that is.
- Our growing season is relatively minute
and we're trying to do a lot with that, and breweries,
and chefs, and people in the food and beverage industry
all want to celebrate that and to be able to continue
to celebrate that, we need more producers and more farmers
and more wild ricers and more people like that
that are willing to go out on a limb so that we can
continue to keep these traditions alive and celebrate
these foods the way that they deserve to be celebrated.
- This is fried wild rice.
Oh wow, the nuttiness really comes through.
The wild rice really stands up in a way that a typical
rice might not.
It might be that nutty flavor with pork.
When you start talking about, what else can you do
with wild rice?
- Let's preserve it, let's honor it, let's expand
the opportunities for the people there so that
they can make a living off it.
It's so unique and it's something that is so beautiful
and such a part of our state heritage
and it is magical.
- The food that grows on water.
If there really is any magic to this versatile
grass, it's the ability to keep bringing Minnesotans
back to the table for generations, longing for one more
taste of the wild rice of the north.
(digital music)