A thick Lakota berry sauce — wild berries simmered down with a little maple and traditionally thickened with cornmeal (not sugar and flour) into a deep, dark, jammy pudding, eaten with fry bread or on its own.
Wojapi is a traditional Lakota/Dakota berry sauce or pudding, historically thickened with ground corn rather than flour and sugar, served with fry bread.
Spoon up wojapi and it is thick, dark, and intensely fruity, deeply berry-sweet and tart at once, far less sugary than jam, with a soft cornmeal body. Bite: pure concentrated wild berry, jammy and warm, spooned over torn fry bread to soak it dark purple. The ancestral berry pudding of the Plains, sweetened by the land, not the sugar bowl.
Long simmering breaks the berries down and concentrates their flavour; a cornmeal slurry thickens the sauce the traditional Indigenous way, before wheat flour and refined sugar arrived. Maple adds just enough sweetness so the berries' own tart-sweetness leads — a sauce that tastes of the land.
Variations
With chokecherries or saskatoons (classic). With blueberries only. Thicker (as a pudding). With honey. Unsweetened. With dried berries.
On the Palate
Where Wojapi sits in the Native American flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 6How it's made
8 steps · 20 min active + 20 min waiting
- 13 min
Put cranberries and blueberries in a pot with a little water.
- 212 min
Simmer until the berries burst and break down.
Watch outSimmer until the berries pop and collapse and the pot smells jammy — that's the tart-sweet you're building the sauce around.
- 32 min
Sweeten lightly with maple syrup to taste.
- 42 min
Mix a little cornmeal with cold water into a slurry.
- 58 min
Stir the slurry in and simmer, stirring, until thick and glossy.
Watch outStir the cornmeal slurry in slowly and keep stirring — it thickens as it heats and will clump if you walk away.
- 63 min
Mash any whole berries against the pot.
- 78 min
Cool slightly to thicken further.
Watch outTake it off looking a touch loose — it sets up noticeably firmer as it cools.
- 82 min
Serve warm with fry bread or over it.
