Southern Frugal Mommas Indian Fry Bread Recipe (Turned into TACOS!)

Hey there! Crystal Lopez here, and today I’m making Brooke’s Indian Fry Bread Recipe from Southern Frugal Momma’s YouTube channel! Im taking that fry bread and turning it into delicious tacos using pantry and fridge staples I already have on hand. We are making a pot of pinto beans in the instant pot and topping them with rotisserie chicken and other taco toppings! You are going to love this cheap meal that won’t break the bank and you’re broke!

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Hey there, it’s Crystal Lopez here from crystalump.com and today I’m going to show you how to take pantry ingredients and make a delicious dinner. We are going to make Indian fried bread tacos. I have wanted to try this for probably over a decade, but I was scared to do it. It seemed so hard. And I’m going to tell you and show you who inspired me on YouTube to finally give this a try. Her recipe was perfect. We are also going to make as much from scratch as possible. So, to go with these tacos, I’m going to make a pot of charro beans using dry pinto beans that are in my pantry. We’re going to cook those in the Instant Pot. We’re going to use rotisserie chicken to add in some extra protein and we’re going to take it and turn it all into a dinner that looks like this. How delicious is it? It was so easy, guys. I can’t wait to tell you and show you all the details. All right, so let’s start by putting our dry beans on in the Instant Pot. The Instant Pot really is the easiest way to cook them. Just I mean I did probably 2 lbs worth. I’m feeding seven people. We have five of our nine kids who still live at home, plus myself and my husband. We’re going to rinse them and wash them. This is a no soak method, which is okay. If you want to soak them, you can totally do that as well. They will cook a little quicker uh and get a little cleaner. So, we’re going to rinse them off and we’re going to look for rocks and things like that just to make sure nothing like that is in our beans. And then we’re going to put them on in the Instant Pot. I am also going to use I’m making more of a charro bean. So, um I’m also going to use some frozen chicken broth that I have in the freezer that I made a month ago or so using a leftover rotisserie chicken. Don’t forget, use up your leftover the what’s left of your rotisserie chicken after you feed your family. Take that and turn it into chicken broth. Chicken broth is expensive. This is a great way to save money there. So, who inspired me to make this recipe? I am so glad that you asked. A couple of weeks ago, her video popped up in my feed, Southern Frugal Mama, who really has nailed down how to cook for so inexpensively. And it was, where’s the recipe? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? It is I believe she was doing a collab with her aunt and her niece, I think. Um, but it was right there. Dirt cheap recipe ideas to make when you are broke. And so I was watching it and she made it look so easy how to make this um fry bread. I was amazed and I thought I can do this. I have everything to do it. I can do it. And I had beans on hand so that I could make She did hers. She topped hers with a bean mixture, but I wanted to make like a taco, an allout taco with lettuce and all of that on top. And this recipe was spot-on. It was so good. So, make sure that you hop over and check out her recipe. I’ll leave a link to her video down below. So, for my beans, I am adding a couple of bay leaves, some cumin, and salt. You want to make sure that your beans are well salted. I added in a couple of cubes of the frozen um homemade chicken broth blocks, which are about a cup a piece. I think I added two in there. You’re going to see them floating around in there. Now, I could have also added in some uh like Rotel tomatoes. That would really make it more like charro beans. This is just a mock version. Use what you have, okay? Just use what you have. This does not have to be perfect. Use what’s in your fridge, freezer, pantry, what have you. So for the beans, I just put them on high pressure for 45 to 50 minutes and it’s plenty of time. So believe it or not, now it’s going to take time for it to rise to pressure, whatnot, but it’ll cook. They will cook and be really good in that amount of time. All right, so we’re going to gather up our ingredients to make this Indian fry bread. I’m going to double her recipe. I buy flour in bulk in 25 lb bags at Sam’s. It is time to buy more. I’m at the very bottom of this bucket. Do make sure that if you’re doing that, you’re that you’re storing it in a food grade bucket. I ordered those buckets online. And then I got the Gamma lids, which are really good for sealing tightly. Um I got those lids. Maybe I got the lids online and the buckets at Home Depot, I think. Anyway, here’s what we’re going to do. So for doubling, you’re going to do two cups of allpurpose flour, one cup of milk, half a teaspoon of salt, and one teaspoon of baking powder. This made them enough for my big family. So if you want to, her version of the recipe is half of that. So hers is 1 cup of allpurpose flour, half a cup of milk, 1/4 of a teaspoon of salt, and half a teaspoon of baking powder. Okay? You can use bread flour. And I believe if you use bread flour, you don’t use baking powder because I think that’s what makes it bread flour is that it has the baking powder in it. All right, we’re going to get this going. Um, we’re we’re going to mix it all up in a bowl. And then I’m just going to use my countertop to uh roll this out like she did. And I actually looked up a couple of other recipes online and some of them involved letting the uh fried bread dough sit for a period of time. I didn’t want to do that. I really liked the simplicity of her version of this recipe. And so that’s what we’re going to do. All right. I just looked it up. Bread flour contains more protein, 12 to 14% more than all-purpose flour, which has 9 to 12%, which leads to a higher gluten content. So, I was wrong. It appears that it has nothing to do with um I thought I had read that bread flour had baking powder added to it, but I am wrong. It has to do with the protein levels and how it changes the gluten. So, there you go. All right. Sorry about that. I guess I could go back and edit it all, but I I don’t want to. I’m just going to explain it to you. Okay. All right. So, we have mixed all of that up. And now we’re going to get enough flour on the countertop so that this doesn’t stick and it’s easy to roll and all of that. And it’s a it’s good that we got our beans going first because it’s going to take them some time in that Instant Pot. And while they are cooking, we are making all this and then we’re going to go through the frying process and all that. So, those beans are cooking while we’re going. If you have a can of pinto beans or a can of reffried beans in your pantry, use that. Um, that’s an option as well. Don’t feel like you have to make the beans from scratch. The reason that I did the pot of pinto beans is because I had the dry beans on hand. I buy them in bulk from Sam’s. You can also get them at Costco and it I had them on hands and I needed to use them up and I did not have a can of pinto or charro beans. So, this is what I did and it worked out just fine. So, this dough is going to be a little tacky. It’s sticking to your fingers a little bit. That is okay. As you kind of work it through the flower, um it will be less sticky. So, you’re just going to work through that and knead it until it is at a place where you can roll it out. And again, this is enough um for I think it made 12 fry bread pieces. Um, and I probably could have made them smaller and made even more. So, I’m taking this tool that I have here. It’s nothing fancy. It came in a probably a pizza kit that my husband had. I don’t know. It’s plastic. It’s It’s not fancy at all, but it will cut this dough. So, you see that I’m taking it, cutting it in half, cutting the half in half, cutting the halves and halves and halves. Like, you’re just getting it down to the smallest pieces. And then I’m going to use a rolling pin to roll these out. Something I want is a rolling pin. I want one of those marble rolling pins. Those of you who are really good at baking and savvy and know all the ins and outs of baking, is there any reason why I would not want a marble rolling pin? I want one of the marble ones that does not have the handles on the ends and it’s just like a a it’s just it’s handleless. I don’t know how to say it other than that. Um or one that is a higher quality, better quality wood that’s like a darker wood that doesn’t have handles. Those of you that are really good at baking, tell me what do I need to know about um rolling pens and why would I not want a marble one? Is there anything I need to know? All right, we’re getting these as thin as possible. I have since this video, I have made another version of fry bread and using a different recipe and um I did not do them as thin. Some of them say to get them really thin where they have holes in it. And I think having holes in it helps to keep it from bubbling up, but um I really like the way that this first batch turned out. And I liked how convenient it was that I didn’t have to let the dough set for any period of time. So, we’re just working our way through this rolling these out. You want to get as many of them rolled out as possible because once you get your oil going, you don’t want your oil to get too hot with nothing in it. So, like in between, this is going to go pretty fast. Once you start browning them, it’s going to go quickly. And you’re you don’t want your oil sitting there under the heat, especially say halfway through the cooking process where it’s just sitting under the heat and it’s getting too hot. So, you want to be able to move quickly getting um your dough thinned out and and um ready to go into the oil ahead of time. I kind of learned that this first time going through all of this. So, we are using vegetable oil in a cast iron skillet. And you want to do it over a medium heat. You don’t want to do it too hot. That is really, really important. And um you want to wait until your oil is hot before you add any of your dough to it. And you notice in that, so this is a pretty big cast iron skillet, but in this skillet, I probably only have about a quarter of an inch of oil in there. We’re not deep frying them. Okay, we’re going to fry them on one side at a time. So, I am putting in a little piece of dough, and that’s going to help me know when my oil is ready. I’ve got this sped up pretty fast. So, we are probably a minute into this oil heating up. Okay, we um we want to test it because we don’t want our dough just sitting in there waiting for the oil to get ready. All right, look at that. Look at how good that looks. So pretty. You want to make sure that you’ve got some tongs. That’s going to help you do the flipping in here and it’s going to go pretty quickly. I will tell you this first time doing it, I did get my dough a little too brown. So really, it just needs to be a light golden brown color. I did go a little too dark, but they still tasted great. And I will also say that these are best when served hot. The smaller your fried bread is, the more that you can fit into the skillet. So, like I said, I made this again a few nights ago, and I made them in a size where I could do three fried breads at a time. What I also like to do is take my plate that I’m going to or my platter that I’m going to put them on and I put paper towels on the bottom so that that will collect all of the oils that are coming off of the fry bread as it’s kind of sitting there and getting to a temperature that you can eat. Um, that really helps so that it’s not just sitting in a pool of oil because as you get these done, you’re stacking them and you’ve got a nice little pile of them and you don’t want them just kind of all sitting in a bed of oil, right? So, just watch your temperature. Um, have as many of the fried bread pieces rolled out so that it’s ready to go quickly into the oil so that your oil is not just sitting once it’s come to temperature. and just pay attention to them and don’t overcook them and don’t let your heat get too hot. And that’s it. We’re getting this going. Our beans are almost done. Um, and then we just need to grate some cheese. Maybe um I used some iceberg lettuce. I did have some that was already shredded from a um previous meal that I made, but grab a head of iceberg lettuce. That’s the cheapest, one of the cheapest ones you can get right now. And um shred that up. so that it can go on top of these if you I had the rotisserie chicken to put on top, but you could also do some ground turkey or ground beef or no meat at all. You don’t have to have meat. Did you notice on that one I’m kind of pulling it some more. You can pull it to thin it out even after you’ve rolled it with the rolling pin. So, um don’t feel like you can’t do some pulling on it. Kind of like what you might do with pizza dough maybe. But we’re getting this going. And I’m getting into a good little groove here. And working my way through all the dough. All right. So, I’ve cleaned up my workspace over here, and now we’re going to grate some cheese. I buy the big Okay. I’ve bought I buy cheese in a block at Walmart, at HB. I’ve done that. But the best price is to buy it in the two pound package block at Sam’s because you can get it for $5 and it’s you pay the same price for half of the size at HB or Walmart. So, I just pull out what I need from the block and then keep the rest of it in a bag in the refrigerator and we will go through. We eat a lot of We eat quite a bit of cheese. So, we don’t just sit down and eat cheese, but we have it on tacos. We have it on. I make um a lot of lunches with cheese or a lot of dinners get topped like casserles with cheese. So, we’re always going through cheese. And that block will last us a couple of weeks and it does not mold. It does not go bad. So, we’re just going to grate up what we need enough to go on top of our fried bread tacos. And then anything that is left, any of the cheese that’s left, I’m grating it into this little that’s a vintage Pyrex container that has like a glass lid. Whatever’s left, I can pop the lid on it and just store it in the fridge and then we can pull more cheese out of that throughout the week if we’re making a lunch that needs cheese or, you know, we need a little bit added to our dinner. So, I do find this is the most inexpensive way to buy cheese. I know that it is a little more work, but the more convenient something is, the more that you’re going to pay for it. So, if you’re on a strict budget right now, grating your own cheese is worth the savings. All right, the Instant Pot has gone off. Now we are releasing all of the pressure and that takes about 2 minutes for all the pressure to come out of the Instant Pot. And then we have our chicken that I bought for under $5 at Sam’s. And we’ve got our cheese. I’ve got some leftover lettuce. And we’re going to put all of this together to make these fried bread tacos. And actually, I really only needed about one breast worth of meat. So, I cut the breast off and sliced it up and that was enough. And then we were able to use the rest of the chicken for another recipe. And then, like I said, use the leftover skin and bones and put it in your slow cooker or on your stove top and make some homemade chicken broth or chicken stock so that you don’t have to buy that at the grocery store. All right, we’re just going to slice this up so that we’ve got um pieces that can go on top of each taco and add some extra protein. And that’s it. Super super easy. And buying this rotisserie chicken is cheaper than buying, you know, if all you have is a little bit of money and you need some chicken. This is enough chicken that you can stretch out for, you know, quite a bit and um it’s under $5. Cheaper than buying, you know, three or four chicken breasts for $13 right now at the grocery store. All right, so now I’m going to make up some plates. There’s the fried bread. Look at how delicious. I have heated up the chicken in the microwave on the plate because I had bought that rotisserie chicken the day before and it was in the fridge. And we’re going to build our tacos. Are you ready? [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]