Snow Peak is supporting Outdoors Empowered Network through the 2022 Campout For Good. Outdoors Empowered Network (OEN) is a national network of community-led, youth-centered outdoor education groups dedicated to increasing access and diversity in the outdoors through gear libraries and outdoor leadership training. One of OEN’s members, Detroit Outdoors, shared this Takoyaki recipe inspired by a visit to Dynamite Hill Farms in Northern Michigan.
This Takoyaki recipe came together over the course of a week-long harvest festival at Dynamite Hill Farms, a family farm on the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Anishinaabe land in Northern Michigan. The gathering celebrated a diverse community and a range of connections to land, plants, animals, and people. We share this recipe not as an instruction to recreate it but more as an encouragement to build relationships with the land around you and all that lives there. Just as our recipe reflects the gathering of friends from within and without Tribal Communities across the Great Lakes, your community holds endless possible recipes for Takoyaki. We hope you will make time to be in community with friends, learn their stories, share your connections to land and food, then create something together. The earth provides everything we need; let's protect it and enjoy it together.
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup high heat cooking oil
- Takoyaki Batter
- 1/2 cup Manoomin (cooked)*
- 1/2 cup Smoked Whitefish*
- 1/4 cup Wild Leeks (chopped)*
- 1/4 cup fried tempura pieces
- Takoyaki Sauce
- Bonito Flakes
- Furikake
- (Last three for garnish at end)
*Note: Words cannot do justice to the importance of these foods to our brothers and sisters that initially inhabited the Great Lakes Region. Our Ojibwe friends harvested, processed, or purchased these foods and shared them with us so we could create this Takoyaki. Whatever you end up including in your Takoyaki, please be in the right relationship with the land, plants, and animals you ask to bring you nourishment. If you don't know how to harvest a food properly, find someone who does. 
Method:
Mix up the Takoyaki batter according to package instructions, and preheat the Takoyaki plate. Distribute cooking oil evenly into depressions across the plate (about 1 tsp per depression). Allow the oil heat up for about 30 seconds, then pour batter evenly across the plate. Immediately add the Manoomin, Whitefish, Leeks, and tempura bits evenly across all depressions. Use a turning pick to separate batter between each depression as it starts to cook. Run the tip of the pick up, down, and across the grid pattern separating each depression.
Use a pick to turn the batter in each depression, allowing the uncooked batter to fill the bottom. Continue turning as cooked batter turns into spheres; move spheres from hot spots to cool spots around the grill as needed to evenly cook the entire plate. When solid spheres form and develop a light brown color, transfer to the serving dish. Spread takoyaki sauce across finished spheres in a crisscross pattern, then sprinkle with Furikake and Bonito Flakes. Serve and enjoy!
