Indigenous cuisine [1] is a type of cuisine that is based on the preparation of cooking recipes with products obtained from native species of a specific area.
Indigenous cuisine is prepared using indigenous ingredients of vegetable or animal origin in traditional recipes of the typical cuisine of a place.
Contemporary indigenous cuisine [2] uses indigenous products to create new dishes. [3]
Chefs and restaurateurs using indigenous foods are aided by farmers who are reviving traditional varieties and breeds. [4]
David Cook has asked how "indigenous cooking" can be defined, arguing that it can mean anything from techniques to ingredients, and that the ingredients can be further argued as using only pre-colonial ingredients vs. using post-colonial and invasive-species ingredients, concluding that "it all depends on your concept of [indigenous] identity." [5]
In Australia, there are chefs both "sticking to the old recipes (and) innovating new ones" using traditional ingredients. [6]
In Canada, multiple restaurants owned by First Nations restaurateurs offer menus based on traditional ingredients such as beans, corn, and squash. [1] According to restaurateur, Shawn Adler, one of the challenges is public awareness. "People understand what Thai food is, what Italian food is, what Chinese food is, what Ethiopian food is," he said. "But people don’t really understand what indigenous cuisine is." [1]
The concept was also used in the Caribbean. [7]
The concept as such began to take shape and gain popularity in Chile at the beginning of the 2010s, when a restaurant dedicated to this style of cuisine in Santiago de Chile appeared in the ranking of the World's 50 Best Restaurants in 2014. [8] [9]
In El Salvador indigenous cuisine is an "emerging movement...composed of young chefs who are integrating traditional foods into contemporary cuisine", according to NPR. [10] Fatima Mirandel said, "We take old ingredients from the [farming areas] and combine them in new ways. The flavor is new and exciting for our generation, and brings back a flood of good memories for the older people." [10] вЗЭв
Some US Native American chefs using indigenous ingredients in traditional dishes object to referring to indigenous cuisine as a "trend". Sean Sherman, a member of the Oglala Lakota and indigenous food activist, [11] said, "It's not a trend. It's a way of life." [12]
Vincent Medina, a member of the Muwekma Ohlone tribe, serves acorn-flour brownies, a non-traditional dish made with indigenous ingredients, at his Cafe Ohlone by Mak-’amham. [13]
American Chinese cuisine is a cuisine derived from Chinese cuisine that was developed by Chinese Americans. The dishes served in many North American Chinese restaurants are adapted to American tastes and often differ significantly from those found in China.
American cuisine consists of the cooking style and traditional dishes prepared in the United States. It has been significantly influenced by Europeans, Indigenous Americans, Africans, Latin Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and many other cultures and traditions. Principal influences on American cuisine are European, Native American, soul food, regional heritages including Cajun, Louisiana Creole, Pennsylvania Dutch, Mormon foodways, Texan, Tex-Mex, New Mexican, and Tlingit, and the cuisines of immigrant groups such as Chinese American, Turkish American, Italian American, Jewish American, and Mexican American. The large size of America and its long history of immigration have created an especially diverse cuisine that varies by region.
French cuisine is the cooking traditions and practices from France. In the 14th century, Guillaume Tirel, a court chef known as "Taillevent", wrote Le Viandier, one of the earliest recipe collections of medieval France. In the 17th century, chefs François Pierre La Varenne and Marie-Antoine Carême spearheaded movements that shifted French cooking away from its foreign influences and developed France's own indigenous style.
Fusion cuisine is a cuisine that combines elements of different culinary traditions that originate from different countries, regions, or cultures. Cuisines of this type are not categorized according to any one particular cuisine style and have played a part in many contemporary restaurant cuisines since the 1970s.
Mexican cuisine consists of the cooking cuisines and traditions of the modern country of Mexico. Its earliest roots lie in Mesoamerican cuisine. Mexican cuisine ingredients and methods begin with the first agricultural communities such as the Olmec and Maya who domesticated maize, created the standard process of nixtamalization, and established their foodways. Successive waves of other Mesoamerican groups brought with them their cooking methods. These included: the Teotihuacanos, Toltec, Huastec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Otomi, Purépecha, Totonac, Mazatec, Mazahua, and Nahua. With the Mexica formation of the multi-ethnic Triple Alliance, culinary foodways became infused.
Soul food is the ethnic cuisine of African Americans. Originating in the American South from the cuisines of enslaved Africans transported from Africa through the Atlantic slave trade, soul food is closely associated with the cuisine of the Southern United States. The expression "soul food" originated in the mid-1960s when "soul" was a common word used to describe African-American culture. Soul food uses cooking techniques and ingredients from West African, Central African, Western European, and Indigenous cuisine of the Americas.
Taiwanese cuisine is a popular style of food with several variations, including Chinese and that of Taiwanese indigenous peoples, with the earliest cuisines known of being the indigenous ones. With over a hundred years of historical development, southern Fujian cuisine has had the most profound impact on mainstream Taiwanese cuisine but it has also been influenced by Hakka cuisine, the cuisines of the waishengren, and Japanese cuisine.
Tex-Mex cuisine is a regional American cuisine that originates from the culinary creations of Tejano people. It has spread from border states such as Texas and others in the Southwestern United States to the rest of the country. It is a subtype of Southwestern cuisine found in the American Southwest.
California cuisine is a food movement that originated in Northern California. The cuisine focuses on dishes that are driven by local and sustainable ingredients with an attention to seasonality and an emphasis on the bounty of the region.
The cuisine of the Southwestern United States is food styled after the rustic cooking of the Southwestern United States. It comprises a fusion of recipes for things that might have been eaten by Spanish colonial settlers, cowboys, Mountain men, Native Americans, and Mexicans throughout the post-Columbian era; there is, however, a great diversity in this kind of cuisine throughout the Southwestern states.
Peruvian cuisine reflects local practices and ingredients including influences mainly from the indigenous population, including the Inca, and cuisines brought by immigrants from Europe, Asia, and Africa. Without the familiar ingredients from their home countries, immigrants modified their traditional cuisines by using ingredients available in Peru.
Filipino cuisine is composed of the cuisines of more than a hundred distinct ethnolinguistic groups found throughout the Philippine archipelago. A majority of mainstream Filipino dishes that comprise Filipino cuisine are from the food traditions of various ethnolinguistic groups and tribes of the archipelago, including the Ilocano, Pangasinan, Kapampangan, Tagalog, Bicolano, Visayan, Chavacano, and Maranao ethnolinguistic groups. The dishes associated with these groups evolved over the centuries from a largely indigenous base shared with maritime Southeast Asia with varied influences from Chinese, Spanish, and American cuisines, in line with the major waves of influence that had enriched the cultures of the archipelago, and adapted using indigenous ingredients to meet local preferences.
Frybread is a dish of the indigenous people of North America that is a flat dough bread, fried or deep-fried in oil, shortening, or lard.
Poke is a dish of diced raw fish tossed in sauce and served either as an appetizer or a main course.
New Nordic Cuisine is a culinary movement which has been developed in the Nordic countries, and Scandinavia in particular, since the mid-2000s. New Nordic Cuisine was propelled and inspired by new ideas introduced in a manifesto written by food activist and entrepreneur Claus Meyer and a number of Scandinavian chefs in 2004 in Copenhagen. New Nordic Cuisine has been used to promote local, natural and seasonal produce as a foundation for new dishes both at restaurants and in the home. As a result, a number of restaurants, particularly restaurants in Denmark, have introduced local ingredients, some often new to the usual palate, in combination with traditional foods prepared in new ways. One notable chef who helped popularize New Nordic cuisine is Rene Redzepi, the former head chef of Noma.
The cuisine of Veracruz is the regional cooking of Veracruz, a Mexican state along the Gulf of Mexico. Its cooking is characterized by three main influences—indigenous, Spanish, and Afro-Cuban—per its history, which included the arrival of the Spanish and of enslaved people from Africa and the Caribbean. These influences have contributed many ingredients to the cooking including native vanilla, corn and seafood, along with rice, spices and tubers. How much the three mix depending on the area of the state, with some areas more heavily favoring one or another. The state has worked to promote its cuisine both in Mexico and abroad as part of its tourism industry.
Southern fusion is a fusion cuisine that blends or combines cuisine elements from the American southern states or other cultures with traditional Southern cooking. The origin of Southern fusion took place before there was a defining phrase for this pattern of cooking. Traditional southern food has originated from African, European and Hispanic cultures. Due to this fact, Southern fusion usually occurs naturally between different regions and cultures through immigration. Southern fusion cuisine can mean a blend of various Southern styles of cooking, or a blend of Southern style with another style of cooking altogether. Prevalent Southern fusion cuisines include Tex-Mex, although there are countless combinations of cuisines that would fall under the category of Southern fusion. Many modern restaurants in the southern states feature elements of Southern fusion cooking.
Sean Sherman is an Oglala Lakota Sioux chef, cookbook author, forager, and promoter of Indigenous cuisine. Sherman founded the indigenous food education business and caterer The Sioux Chef and founded the nonprofit North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NĀTIFS). He received a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award and his 2017 cookbook, The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen, won the 2018 James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook. In 2022, Owamni won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant.
Lois Ellen Frank is an American food historian, cookbook author, culinary anthropologist, and educator. She won a 2003 James Beard Foundation Award for her cookbook Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations, the first cookbook of Native American cuisine so honored.
Norma Listman and Saqib Keval are chefs and restaurateurs in Mexico City.