The Hirshon Ojibwe Gourmet Turkey And Wild Rice Soup - Gichi-Bine Manoomin Naboob — Wild Rice Soup Image Used Under Creative Commons License From Twitter.com

My glorious and well-fed Citizens – I am honored to welcome you all as you emerge bleary-eyed and hungry from your multi-day Thanksgiving tryptophan coma! I hope all of you made it through the holiday unscathed from crazy relatives and their…unique political views and eccentricities around your table! Rather than regale you with yet another set of Thanksgiving recipes , I thought instead to give you a way to use up your leftovers with an Ojibwe-inspired turkey and wild rice soup that is delicious AND pays respect to the First Nations/Native Americans who first TAUGHT us how to eat these foods!

The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.

According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of the largest tribal populations among Native American peoples. In Canada, they are the second-largest First Nations population, surpassed only by the Cree. They are one of the most numerous Indigenous Peoples north of the Rio Grande. The Ojibwe population is approximately 320,000 people, with 170,742 living in the United States as of 2010, and approximately 160,000 living in Canada. The Ojibwe language is Anishinaabemowin, a branch of the Algonquian language family.

They are part of the Council of Three Fires (which also include the Odawa and Potawatomi) and of the larger Anishinaabeg, which also include Algonquin, Nipissing, and Oji-Cree people. Historically, through the Saulteaux branch, they were a part of the Iron Confederacy with the Cree, Assiniboine, and Metis.

The Ojibwe are known for their birchbark canoes, birchbark scrolls, mining and trade in copper, as well as their cultivation of wild rice and maple syrup. Their Midewiwin Society is well respected as the keeper of detailed and complex scrolls of events, oral history, songs, maps, memories, stories, geometry, and mathematics. European powers, Canada, and the United States have colonized Ojibwe lands. The Ojibwe signed treaties with settler leaders to surrender land for settlement in exchange for compensation, land reserves and guarantees of traditional rights.

The exonym for this Anishinaabe group is Ojibwe (plural: Ojibweg). This name is commonly anglicized as “Ojibwa” or “Ojibway” – the name “Chippewa” is an alternative anglicization. Although many variations exist in the literature, “Chippewa” is more common in the United States, and “Ojibway” predominates in Canada, but both terms are used in each country. In many Ojibwe communities throughout Canada and the U.S. since the late 20th century, more members have been using the generalized name Anishinaabe.

As noted on the Minnesota Historical Society website:

The ancestors of the Ojibwe lived throughout the northeastern part of North America and along the Atlantic Coast. Due to a combination of prophecies and tribal warfare, around 1,500 years ago the Ojibwe people left their homes along the ocean and began a slow migration westward that lasted for many centuries.

Ojibwe oral history and archaeological records provide evidence that the Ojibwe moved slowly in small groups following the Great Lakes westward. By the time the French arrived in the Great Lakes area in the early 1600s, the Ojibwe were well established at Sault Ste. Marie and the surrounding area. An Ojibwe prophecy that urged them to move west to “the land where food grows on water” was a clear reference to wild rice and served as a major incentive to migrate westward. Eventually some bands made their homes in the northern area of present-day Minnesota.

The most populous tribe in North America, the Ojibwe live in both the United States and Canada and occupy land around the entire Great Lakes, including in Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ontario. The seven Ojibwe reservations in Minnesota are Bois Forte (Nett Lake), Fond du Lac, Grand Portage, Leech Lake, Mille Lacs, White Earth, and Red Lake. The name “Ojibwe” may be drawn from either the puckered seam of the Ojibwe moccasin or the Ojibwe custom of writing on birch bark.

The Ojibwe have always hunted and fished, made maple sugar and syrup, and harvested wild rice. Prior to the 20th century, the Ojibwe lived in wigwams and travelled the waterways of the region in birch bark canoes. Ojibwe communities were historically based on clans, or “doodem,” which determined a person’s place in Ojibwe society. Different clans represented different aspects of Ojibwe society; for example, political leaders came from the loon or crane clans, while warriors were traditionally from the bear, martin, lynx, and wolf clans.

Ojibwe theology centers on a belief in a single creating force but also incorporates a wide pantheon of spirits that play specific roles in the universe.

Among the Ojibwe, honor and prestige came with generosity. Ojibwe culture and society were structured around reciprocity, with gift-giving playing an important social role. During a ceremony reinforced with an exchange of gifts, parties fulfilled the social expectations of kinship and agreed to maintain a reciprocal relationship of mutual assistance and obligation. Many fur traders, and later European and American government officials, used gift-giving to help establish economic and diplomatic ties with various Ojibwe communities.

Throughout the fur trade era, the Ojibwe valued their relationship with the Dakota above those they maintained with European Americans. While historians have frequently cited ongoing conflict between the Ojibwe and Dakota, the two peoples were more often at peace than at war. In 1679 the Ojibwe and the Dakota formed an alliance through peaceful diplomacy at Fond du Lac in present-day Minnesota.

The Ojibwe agreed to provide the Dakota with fur trade goods, and in return the Dakota permitted the Ojibwe to move west toward the Mississippi River. During this period of peace that lasted for 57 years, the Ojibwe and Dakota often hunted together, created families together, shared their religious experiences, and prospered. From 1736–1760, intense territorial conflict between the Ojibwe and Dakota brought them into deadly conflict. By the middle of the 1800s, intertribal conflict was abandoned as both tribes were overwhelmed by challenges posed by the surge of European American settler-colonists.

For the Ojibwe, the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers was a place of diplomacy and trade. They met with Dakota people at Mni Sni (Coldwater Spring) and after European Americans arrived, they frequented the area to trade, treat with the US Indian Agent, and sign treaties. Ojibwe delegations gathered at Fort Snelling in 1820 to meet with local Dakota leaders and in 1825 before traveling to Prairie du Chien for treaty negotiations.

In 1837 more than 1,000 Ojibwe met Dakota and US representatives at the confluence to negotiate another treaty. The Ojibwe forced a rare provision into the Treaty of St. Peters, retaining the right to hunt, fish, gather wild rice, and otherwise use the land as they always had. The collapse of the fur trade economy, land dispossession through treaties, and the creation of reservations dramatically altered Ojibwe lives and left them with a small portion of their original homelands at the end of the 1800s.

As so many Ojibwe live in Minnesota, they have become synonymous with wild rice, which for the record is NOT a rice at all, but rather a species of grass growing in marshy wetlands! The Ojibwe have a legal right to gather wild rice and are in fact responsible for the majority of it in most stores today. Wild rice soup is considered Minnesota’s unofficial state dish – yet despite that, it is in fact quite a recent dish and has nothing to do with the Ojibwe in its original form (outside of the wild rice)! As noted in this article from the Tuscaloosa News (reprinted from a Minnesota newspaper, I believe):

MINNEAPOLIS — A few weeks ago, to kick off the 50th anniversary of the Taste section, we sifted through our archives and explored the history of wild rice soup. It’s probably Taste’s most-published recipe, with more than 60 iterations appearing over the years.

The story generated a phone call — and a ton of memories — from Keith Kersten. He’s now the CEO of Bushel Boy Farms in Owatonna, Minn. In the mid-1970s, he was a recent graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, finishing his studies at the University of Minnesota and working for chef Willy Mueller and general manager Niels Tiedt at the Orion Room, the swanky restaurant at the top of the IDS Tower in downtown Minneapolis. That’s where the recipe originated, and where this chapter of the story begins.

“Willy was Swiss, and when he got here, he fell in love with wild rice,” recalled Kersten. “He had never seen it before. He made a pilaf with it, and it went on every dish, and it was delicious. Every night, he would make up two big roasting pans of wild rice, and he’d often have one left over, and that was an extremely expensive and wasteful thing to do. Back in 1974, you could only harvest wild rice if you were Native American, and, as a result, that created a monopoly.

It was $16 a pound, I remember that to this day. That’s the equivalent of $40 to $50 today. (Actually, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, it’s closer to $80). Niels said that, at that price, wild rice was ‘Minnesota truffles.’”

Yes, the recipe for wild rice soup was created out of economic necessity.

“Niels was saying, ‘He’s throwing all of this wild rice away, what are we going to do with this guy?’” Kersten said. “So I went in and I whipped up a wild rice soup. I took that (leftover) wild rice, I incorporated a bechamel, and then added ham, which brought it all together. Everyone loved it, and so we put it out at lunch. Ann Burckhardt (a Minneapolis Star food writer) happened to be there that day, and she raved about it.”

Word obviously got around, because on Aug 28, 1974, a Minneapolis Star reader wrote into the Taste section’s Restaurant Requests column, asking for the recipe. Tiedt politely declined.

The clip reads, “This particular soup, although served in the Orion Restaurant, was created for the Tower Club, which is a private luncheon club,” wrote Tiedt. “We prefer to keep the recipe for our members and guests only.” But Kersten said that there was more to it than that.

“I said I wasn’t interested in giving the secret ingredient,” he said. “Not because I didn’t want readers to know, but because I didn’t want Willy to know. I was young, and I was dumb, but I had a good clientele built up there, and I wasn’t going to give it up. That’s why we turned down the request to publish the recipe. Niels even put some pressure on, but I knew that I wasn’t going to be there for very long. The soup was extremely popular; it’s what saved my job. Willy wanted me fired, but Niels said, ‘I can’t fire him. Ann Burckhardt might write a story about that soup.’”

Shortly thereafter, Kersten went to work for Northwest Airlines, and relocated to Montana. Fast-forward to Dec. 17, 1975. Another Taste reader wrote into Restaurant Requests, inquiring about the recipe. This time, the restaurant obliged (find the recipe at the end of this story). There’s just one hitch.

“It wasn’t my recipe, it was Willy’s,” said Kersten. “When I left the Orion Room, Willy did his own rendition of wild rice soup, and that’s the recipe that they shared with the newspaper. My mother cut it out of the Star and sent it to me, and I got a big kick out of seeing it.” Four years passed. Kersten was back in Minneapolis on a family visit, and on a walk with his young daughter, he ran into supermarket owner Don Byerly. “He was trimming his roses,” said Kersten. “He gave my daughter a rose, and a week later I was working for him.”

Byerly wanted to build a central kitchen to supply his growing chain of supermarkets with freshly prepared foods, and he hired Kersten to make the project a reality. Guess who was a fan of that Orion Room wild rice soup?

“When he’d visit the restaurant, Don would ask for a couple of quarts — or whatever he could get — and then take the soup back to the Byerly’s kitchen, and they would try and figure it out,” said Kersten. “I remember going there — it was at the St. Paul store, on Suburban Avenue — and seeing what they were doing, and they were using things like artificial creamer, and cream of mushroom soup. I got a big kick out of that. That’s when I said, ‘I have the recipe.’”

Frozen heat-and-serve wild rice soup was about to become a mainstream favorite, thanks to the reach and influence of Byerly’s, which by 1980 was operating five busy locations, including its influential, much-copied mega supermarket in St. Louis Park.

Byerly — he sold majority ownership of his company in 1990 and it was acquired by Lunds seven years later — is retired and living in California. He isn’t sure of the exact date when the decision was made to get into the frozen wild-rice soup business, although he recalls that the phenomenon started as a menu item at the stores’ restaurants.

“We had a lot of customers asking to buy soup by the pint, or the quart, so they could take it home,” Byerly said. “Being a retail guy, I thought, ‘Wait a minute, I think there’s an opportunity here.’ We always tried to provide something that people couldn’t get elsewhere. Keith took the soup, and he ran with it, and it was definitely something that people couldn’t get elsewhere.”

The production facility — one of the first of its kind in the country — opened in southeast Minneapolis in 1979. “And we built the kitchen around that soup,” said Kersten. “Don had great forethought. The kitchen was supposed to be for fresh foods, but there were huge spikes in demand, and to keep the staff busy during slow periods, we added the line of what developed into 19 frozen soups, from chicken noodle to vegetable beef. The wild rice soup became a cornerstone of that kitchen, and then it became an institution.”

Byerly’s also spread the wild rice soup gospel by sharing the recipe with its customers (“The recipe is sent all over the United States — with a bag of Minnesota-grown wild rice — to loving friends and relatives from Byerly’s customers,” said Gwen Bacheller, home economist at Byerly’s Ridgedale, in a 1985 Taste story). There was one slight hitch: the public wasn’t getting Kersten’s formula. He was still keeping that secret ingredient a secret.

“That was the recipe that was created by our home economists,” said Kersten. “They did a great job with lots of different recipes.”

Byerly’s wild rice soup recipe first appeared in Taste on Dec. 31, 1980; since then, variations have been published more than a half-dozen times. Decades later, Kersten is no longer preparing wild rice soup. “Why should it be, when the Lunds & Byerlys version is so phenomenal?” he said. By the way, that secret ingredient that Kersten refused to reveal, back in his Orion Room days? It’s staying that way. “I’m not going to say what it is,” he said. “It belongs to Lunds & Byerlys. It’s their business.”

Today, you can literally find chicken and wild rice soup at every church or event potluck in Minnesota, but I – the Incomparable One! – wanted to both elevate the recipe as well as bringing it back to Ojibwe flavor profiles such as turkey and other wild ingredients blended with a sensibility straight out of a Michelin-starred kitchen! IMHO – I have wildly succeeded and I hope you see fit to try this recipe as a great way to use up your Thanksgiving leftovers! 😀

You will need to make a turkey stock (as opposed to chicken stock) from some leftover turkey breast, combined with chicken stock and some turkey glacé, which you can easily purchase at the link. I recommend this First Nation-collected brand of wild rice, which is the true backbone of this delicious soup! My unique First Nation touches include dried wild morel mushrooms (which may be purchased from here), wild ramp powder from here, and walnut butter from here. I prefer using leeks to onion in this recipe, and also add a touch of medium-dry (Amontillado) sherry for an elegant touch.

Lastly, I prefer white pepper in this recipe – this is the finest white pepper on the planet! My Citizens – let us never forget the debt of honor we owe to the First Nations for saving the Puritans collective asses during that first Thanksgiving – and this updated Minnesota classic is a perfect and delicious way to do just that! Immodestly, I know that My version of this classic recipe is the finest you will ever experience and it is truly enriched with the flavors of the forest perhaps enjoyed by the founding Pilgrims on that first-ever Thanksgiving! 😀

Battle on – the Generalissimo