James Beard award-winning Oglala Lakota chef, Sean Sherman, is on a mission to make delicious, decolonized dishes that showcase Native American cuisine in fresh and authentic ways –– and this tasty masa flatbread, created specifically for Ooni is no exception. A tamale batter is used as the base, and rather than steaming the masa, it’s pressed into a cast-iron skillet and cooked at a high heat to make a tasty flatbread that’s both crisp and chewy. Serve it with a spicy charred vegetable salsa, and you’ll have an appetizer that’s hard to stop eating.

Sherman is the Minneapolis/Saint Paul-based founder and CEO Chef of The Sioux Chef, a company dedicated to honoring and revitalizing Native American cuisine and re-identifying North American cuisine ––and this dish is right in line with those values. With a short list of ingredients, the masa harina is made of nixtamalized corn––corn alkalized with wood ash and ground into a fine paste––is the star and an integral part of Indigenous cuisine. 

“Corn has been a staple of all of the Americas for so long, and the significance of these regions and connection to corn covers a vast area  [in both North and South America] So many of our Indigenous communities are deeply connected to corn,” Sherman told us.

In Owamni by The Sioux Chef, a modern Indigenous restaurant in Minneapolis, Sherman and co-owner Dana Thompson showcase Native ingredients like elk, bison, tepary beans and crickets, while other supposed staples are absent. Because Sherman features the true flavors of North America and aims to decolonize his dishes, he doesn’t use ingredients that originated from Europe like wheat flour, dairy, cane sugar, beef, pork and chicken, and he prioritizes purchasing ingredients from Indigenous food producers. In 2022, just about a year after opening, Owamni won a James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant, and the positive reviews continue to pour in. 

To keep the Indigenous spirit of the dish alive, we highly encourage you to use duck fat, which can be found at your local butcher, but pork fat can be used as a substitute in a pinch. We’ll be adding Chef Sherman’s masa flatbreads and salsa to our Thanksgiving menus this year. As an appetizer or an alternative to a dinner roll, the crisp wedges of the flatbread combined with the acidity of the salsa will be a welcome addition and compliment to any holiday table laden with heavier dishes.