As South Dakotans love to road trip across the state, plus, hundreds of thousands of tourists vacation here throughout the summer, this episode is for anyone who wants to learn more about, and try, 26 iconic dishes and drinks that define the Mount Rushmore state. If you’re from the Midwest, you’ve probably already checked a lot of these foods off your list. And even though I’m mostly talking about South Dakota where I was born and raised, I included a few iconic dishes from neighboring states like Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Minnesota, where I live now. I found some fun commonalities among foods we consider to be iconic in the upper Midwest. 

The South Dakota list includes foods with Native American influence like Indian tacos, fry bread, wojapi and wasna, and Germans from Russia influence like fleishe kuchele and kuchen, to down-home comfort meals like hot beef commercial and beer-battered and fried walleye (just a note, the restaurant mentioned no longer serves walleye or cooks a fisherman's catch of the day), to the sought-after watermelons grown in the sandy soil near the James River, the Zebra doughnut in Centerville that’s so good it has its own trademark, Dakota martinis and chokecherry wine, to the liquid gold produced by the state insect—the honeybee. 

In this episode, I reference an article I wrote and photographed in 2017 for the Food Network for its collection titled, States’ Plates. I thought it would be fun to talk about the delicious foods on a podcast episode that you can listen to while you’re driving around the state, and maybe try some new ones if you haven’t had all 26. The link to the article is in the show notes if you want to follow along and look at the mouthwatering photos in the gallery.

Since I grew up in South Dakota, I was familiar with many of these foods like lefse, chislic, and SDSU cookies ‘n cream ice cream, but there are a few that were new to me—like tiger meat, pasties, and kolache. I share which two I was most surprised that I liked, the one that I still dream about and highly recommend you try at least once in your life, the one that I now always try to eat when I’m in Rapid City, and the one dish I have not, and will never, eat.

Show Notes & Links

Food Network States’ Plate South Dakota

Wheeel Inn

Cheyenne Crossing

Watecha Bowl

WoodenKnife

Tyndall Bakery

Pietz’s Kuchen Kitchen & Specialties

Prairie Berry Winery

Schade Vineyward

Purple Pie Place

Meridian Corner

Adee Honey Farms

Fleish Kuchle recipe

Grandma’s Kuchen

Sanderson Gardens

Harriet & Oak

Lou Lou’s Bomdiggities Pasties & Coffee Shop

Dakota Life: From Cornwall to the Hills

Pasty recipe

Laughing Water Restaurant

Savor South Dakota, Wojapi recipe

Savor South Dakota Mavis Two Bulls and Rachel Nava making wojapi

Black Hills Burger & Bun

SDSU Dairy Bar

Zebra King Donuts

Dimock Dairy

Stensland Family Farms

Cattleman’s Club Steakhouse

Boat House Bar & Grill at Spring Creek (the restaurant has changed hands and no longer serves walleye and do NOT cook a fisherman's catch of the day)

The Pheasant Restaurant & Lounge

Tanka

The Cardinal Tap

Dakota Butcher

Kessler’s

Flandreau Bakery

Ruth Schumacher’s Cheese Buttons Recipe

#ourSweetMidwestLife

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