As winter turns to spring and the bright purple flowers of the redbud trees begin to bloom, Cherokee chef Bradley James Drye knows it’s time to forage for morels as well as a staple of Native American cuisine in Oklahoma: wild green onions. It’s time to prepare.
Wild onions are one of the first foods to grow in the dead of winter in the South, and generations of indigenous people there have kept the allium at the center of an annual communal event. From February to May, there is a wild onion dinner every Saturday somewhere in oklahoma,
The onion’s bright green stalks reach a few inches above dry leaves that crunch beneath Dry’s feet on a cool March morning as he hunts in parks and vacant lots near downtown Tulsa. The land he forages on extends into the Muscogee Nation and the Cherokee Nation, and he’s thinking about his Elise — grandmother in Cherokee — who taught him to pick and cook wild onions.
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“To be able to cook like this, to cook the things that my grandmother used to cook for strangers, it’s really cool,” Dry explains, scanning the forest floor. He is careful not to harvest too much, taking only what he needs.
“Traditionally, the ones I grew up with, you just boil them in a little water and then fry them with a fried egg,” Dry said.
Wild onions like this are usually cooked for large gatherings, served with a side dish of greens with a familiar pepper, fried pork, beans, frybread, chicken dumplings, cornbread and safke – wood. Soup made from cracked corn and lye from ash that is common among tribal nations of the southeast, including the Muscogee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, and Seminole.
Carol Tiger, a member of the Muscogee Nation and elder of the Springfield United Methodist Church in Springfield, Oklahoma, drips oil from a freshly baked piece of frybread at the church’s annual wild onion dinner on April 6, 2024. Wild onions are one of the first foods to grow in the spring, and dinners have been a tradition in Native American communities for generations. (AP Photo/Brittany Bendabout)
Dry likes to mix tradition with contemporariness, like using wild onions to make omelettes and kimchi.
“I’ve also used them to make salsa or chimichurri for steak,” he adds.
Next Saturday morning, at least 100 people are waiting for the tribal community center to open in Okmulgee, the capital of the Muscogee Nation, about 40 miles south of Tulsa. For the second year in a row, the community is gathering for a wild onion dinner to raise travel funds for Claudia McHenry, a tribal citizen who hopes to compete in the Miss Indian World pageant this year in Albuquerque, New Mexico .
Dozens of people cook and share a meal, a silent auction takes place, and a local Meko – a Muskogee spiritual leader – gives an initial welcome.
Churches over the past several generations, especially in Oklahoma United Methodist Church In Native American communities — wild onion dinners are used to raise money for church bills and annual dues, said Chabon Kernell, a MCO and UMC clergy member for his community.
“But as the years went on, it became a huge community event,” he said.
McHenry said seeing the community rally behind him gives him the courage he needs.
“Just to see people physically come out for me,” he said. “It gives me a lot of really good feelings and inspires me and motivates me to move forward toward my goals.”
For the next three hours, hundreds of people come and pay $15 for a plate of food to send him on his way. For many, helping McHenry or a local church is the only thing that can improve the undeniable allure of the HogFry. And next Saturday, nowhere is that more true than at Springfield UMC in Okemah, 35 miles south.
It is not unusual for people to come from Arkansas, Kansas or Texas for a piece of that community’s famous fried pork and a pile of wild onions. Some people travel so far because they are part of the Muskogee diaspora. Others simply follow church signs up a dusty gravel road until the canopy of trees opens up to an endless field of waving grass, still coppery from the rest of winter.
For nearly two decades, hundreds of people have lined up on the porch of the church’s small meeting hall for a plate of food on the first Saturday in April. And every year you’ll find Carol Tiger there elbow-deep in bowls of frybread mix.
Everyone calls Tiger the head cook.
“I just tell them what to do,” she said, eliciting laughter from the kitchen.
In past years, Tiger and other church elders would take their grandchildren to pick onions, but this year they expect 500 to 600 hungry people, so they cleaned and chopped onions for $40 a gallon. bought. Church families also contribute a gallon each.
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Elders sit on chairs on the verandah and tell stories, children play in the nearby forests, and vendors sell beads and clothes. The small ground around the church has been mowed and filled with vehicles carrying tribal tags from across the state. Men roast pork in a giant cauldron over a fire outside, while women fill the dining room with warmth homemade food,
After clearing their plates, attendees enjoy a piece of cake or a bowl of grape dumplings – a dessert traditionally made from wild grape juice that today is often made with frozen juice and canned biscuits. They relax, talk and eat until the afternoon, when it’s time to leave they are decidedly sad.
But it’s the middle of April, and the season for eating wild onions isn’t over yet. There’s always next Saturday, a little down the road.
