Where would we be without the creative inspiration from food bloggers? Not everyone is super innovative in the kitchen, but that doesn’t mean you can’t WOW your friends and family’s tastebuds. And you don’t need to spend hours flipping through a cookbook trying to find a recipe that strikes your fancy. Now you can find all the recipes your heart desires on food blogs. There are some incredibly inventive and inspiring BIPOC bakers and food bloggers that you NEED to follow, using traditional ingredients to create delicious, nutritious recipes. And to honour Indigenous peoples’ month, here are a few of our favourites.
Inspired by his upbringing in New Orleans and his Honduran roots, Bryan makes creative sourdough recipes and publishes them on his blog and in his cookbook, New World Sourdough. He is also working on a Latin American cookbook that will be sure to have you drooling!
On top of this, you can also learn to cook from his TV show and his very visually pleasing socials. We particularly love his video on making Pan Cubano de Masa Madre – sourdough Cuban bread.
Keep updated with his latest recipes and cookbooks on his blog.
Taught by her Granny to create tasty recipes using simple ingredients, Chef Carla puts her heart and her soul into every bake at Viola’s Heritage Bakes, located in New Orleans.
If you keep an eye on their social media you’ll get updates on any special bakes at their bakery. Definitely make sure to stop by during Mardi Gras for their own King Cake. Most of all, they are well known for their sandwich bread which we are told is best eaten with peanut butter and jelly.
Head over to their bakery website to pre-order a loaf, buy gift cards, and support the team by purchasing some of their merchandise.
Chef Katsi’tsyo Tawyna Brant is a Mohawk woman and part of the Tekarihoken Turtle clan. She is the owner of Yawékon (which means “it tastes good”), a restaurant serving Haudenosaunee cuisine to the Six Nations community in Southern Ontario, Canada. She learned everything she knows about the traditional Haudenosaunee cuisine from her mother and began working in the food industry when she was only 12 years old! After many years of working for others in the industry, she decided to start her own venture, bringing sustainably produced and culturally appropriate food to the Six Nations community.
She comes up with new innovative menus daily, which you can find on Yawékon’s Instagram if you want inspiration. She has been focusing on using traditional ingredients as part of healthier recipes like vegetable quinoa power bowls and vegetarian bean dips.
Through her online blog, she keeps the Indigenous North American and Haudenosaunee food culture alive. She features recipes, information about traditional ingredients, and updates about her food and the community. Check her out on Instagram here.
Alana Yazzie is a descendant of the Navajo people, a group of Indigenous peoples that now live predominantly in the southwest regions of The United States. Alana was born and raised in New Mexico and loves spicy Native American cuisine. On her blog. The Fancy Navajo, she shares traditional Navajo recipes and promotes local Indigenous businesses that inspire her. She also uses the practices of Navajo cooking to add twists to other types of cuisines.
One of the most typical foods in traditional Navajo cooking is blue corn, and Alana has an entire section on her blog which focuses on uses for this ingredient. Some of her recipes include blue corn scones, blue corn cupcakes, and blue corn crepes. She also includes a traditional magic bread dough recipe (which is vegan!) and can be used to make everything from tortillas to biscuits. Alana has a significant presence on Instagram, where she shares her creations and also showcases local Navajo brands and businesses.
Lyssa Wade is a BIPOC vegan chef based in Des Moines, Idaho. She creates vegan, organic, and locally-sourced cuisine in her business called Veggie Thumper. Many of the traditional recipes in her family were based around a foundation of meat. But she intended to break the cycle of the generational recipes and find healthy, fresh alternatives. One thing that stuck out to her, in particular, is that fresh produce isn’t often available in communities with a high number of minorities. And she made it her mission to change that and bring fresh foods to overlooked communities.
She converted a school bus into a pop-up restaurant on wheels so she could serve her delicious creations across Idaho at various events and farmers’ markets. Her blog, Veggie Thumper, features vegan spins on traditional recipes like Sweet Life Cornbread, White Bean Jackfruit Verde Chili and Lentil Tacos. You can follow her journey on Instagram, where she shares new recipes, updated menus and lets you know where you can find Veggie Thumper next.
Jenné Claiborne is a vegan food blogger and YouTuber from Atlanta, Georgia, with Creole ancestry. Her blog is called Sweet Potato Soul, and it’s one of the most popular vegan food blogs on the internet. She draws her food inspiration from her Nana, who she would spend hours in the kitchen with as a child, watching her cook up classic soul food. Although traditional southern recipes included blackened fish sandwiches and sweet potato pie, she knew she could make them more healthy and ethical. The key was to continue to use Creole and blackening seasonings but on tofu and vegetables or incorporate liquid smoke or smoked paprika.
Jenné studied at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and founded a personal chef company called The Nourishing Vegan. She also has a cookbook called Sweet Potato Soul. Find her on Instagram here, where she has almost 400k followers!
Rachel Eyahpaise is an Indigenous entrepreneur from The Zagime Anishinabek First Nations territory in southern Saskatchewan. When she was in Grade 3, she began selling frozen drinks door-to-door and thus began her journey into entrepreneurship. There is a significant Indigenous community in Saskatchewan, meaning the demand for bannock is high. What is bannock? It’s a type of flat bread that has always been a staple in the Native American diet. And it’s incredibly versatile.
Rachel began as a home cook, but soon tapped into the demand for bannock and has been growing her family business over the last six years. Finally, she opened Bannock Express in 2020 in Saskatoon and has never looked back. During this time, she has had tens of thousands of walk-ins and completed over 1000 catering orders. On top of that, her business gives out free meals to those in need through her donation wall program. Customers can donate a meal, which gets added to the wall for someone in need to claim.
You can follow Bannock Express on Facebook or Instagram to stay up-to-date with what Rachel is up to.
These are just a few of the many fantastic BIPOC bakers and food bloggers that are bringing us inspiring and innovative recipes and doing incredible things for their communities. Being located within the ancestral territories of the Lil’wat Aboriginal peoples and Squamish Nation peoples, it’s incredibly important for us to highlight their food traditions to ensure that people can continue to enjoy them for years to come.
