Imagine waking up on a lazy Saturday morning with your best laid plans in hand only to find that your dear old refrigerator/freezer has apparently met a terrible fate overnight and appears to have called it quits…for good. No amount of shaking or wiggling of cords or button pushing could re-awaken my sleeping Whirlpool beauty, and after 23 years of dedicated service she is finally going to that big appliance cemetery in the sky…
With my best laid plans now out the window, I shift gears to plan B and realize that before I even have my breakfast, I have to put out some major fires….what the heck am I going to do with a thawed 5 pound chuck roast and 4 pounds of ground beef?
Well, thankfully I had a few other veggies in the refrigerator that also needed to be used, so I made a delicious beef & vegetable soup with a few potatoes I had on hand using the same procedure I used here for my beef and barley soup…I cut the roast into small pieces, seared them off and threw everything together in the pot and let them all simmer away for a really delicious one pot meal…which, because of my cooking marathon, I ended up having for breakfast.
My next dilemma was what the heck am I going to make with 4 pounds of ground beef? Well, I made a big pot of my delicious Bolognese sauce with pasta which we shared with happy friends and neighbors and the rest of the ground beef we made into Indian tacos with Navajo fry bread.
Never heard of Navajo fry bread? It’s actually something that is very well known in the southwest, and in Arizona there is a restaurant called the Fry Bread House where you can throw your diet out of the window and enjoy this naughty and delicious pleasure with abandon…
I had heard about Navajo fry bread a long time ago, and actually enjoyed a sweet version of it in a restaurant in Florida years ago that was offered as the main bread of the restaurant…it was sweet and delicious and was gobbled up in no time.
The recipe I used was one that I came across on several how to video sites. All of the recipes were pretty much the same, with a few variations here and there. The one I chose used whole milk (because I also had some milk to use), but I also came across some variations that used a combination of dry milk & water, and others that cut a few tablespoons of shortening into the flour for richness and then added some cold water to bring it all together. Traditional fry bread is also fried in shortening, but we used canola oil with great results. You can adjust your technique depending on how bad or how good you want to be with equally good results.
The finished product has large bubbles in the surface from the baking powder, and is pillowy soft and tender and very easy to roll. I ended up cooking the ground beef using some of my homemade taco seasoning that I always have on hand, and made a few extra fry breads to enjoy for dessert by drizzling on some honey. You can also dust them with a little powdered sugar & cinnamon, and if you want to be really bad, add a scoop of ice cream for a really sinful dessert. They will remind you of the fried dough we have all enjoyed at carnivals, but so much better. This was a great and easy way to turn a difficult situation into a truly delicious memory that we will definitely indulge in again…only next time, I hope that it will be under better circumstances…
Navajo Fry Bread (makes 8-6” breads)
3 cups flour, finely milled is best (like King Arthur or White Lilly)
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups whole milk
Heat your oil to 350°F. Put the flour into a medium sized bowl, and add the salt and the baking powder. Mix the dry ingredients together and add in the milk until a soft dough forms. Put the dough out onto your lightly floured counter and knead it well for about 5 minutes until it is smooth. Cut the dough into 8 equal portions and roll it out with a rolling pin to roughly a 6” or 7” diameter.
You will only be able to fry one large one at a time, so gently lay the dough into the hot oil and watch as it puffs up. It is ready to flip when the edges turn a golden brown color. Have a large container lined with paper on your counter so you can drain the fry breads when you remove them from the oil. They must drain and cool standing on their edge, so lay them up against your container. If you lay them flat on top of each other, the grease will not drain correctly and they will get very soggy and greasy. Top with your favorite fillings and enjoy!
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