Mariah Gladstone, founder of Indigikitchen, will be competing on Food Network’s “Chopped” Tuesday evening, where contestants will be using Native American inspired ingredients while cooking against the clock.  

Gladstone was contacted by the show's casting team in 2024 and asked about her interest in appearing on it. Eventually, though, the show decided to put together an entire episode that featured indigenous cooks and was inspired by Native American dishes, titled “Indigenous Inspiration.” The episode airs on Food Network at 7 p.m. Mountain time on April 21.  

Through her work with Indigikitchen, Gladstone is more than familiar with keeping native food traditions alive. Her online cooking show aims to “re-indigenize” diets through how-to videos using ingredients found in traditional native diets. 

On “Chopped,” Gladstone said she and the other chefs were happy to elevate indigenous cuisine on a national platform. It was competitive, she said, but no one lost sight of the opportunity at hand.  

“... At the end of the day, we all have the same goal, which is to keep working with our traditional foods and make them brilliant and creative dishes of the 21st century,” she said. 

She had worked previously with Judge Sean Sherman’s nonprofit NATIFS, or North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems, but it was the first time she put names to faces for many of her fellow contestants. Eric Adjepong and Pyet DeSpain judged the show alongside Sherman. 

She competed against Ray Naranjo and Justin Pioche of New Mexico and Jessica Walks First of Illinois.  

Walks First is Menominee and is the executive chef and owner of Ketapanen Kitchen, Chicago's first Native American pop-up kitchen and catering company.  

Santa Clara Pueblo’s Ray Naranjo operates Manko, a local food truck, and will soon bring his cuisine to the upcoming Santa Fe Food Hall, where he will run a Native cuisine restaurant, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican.  

Pioche is a 2023 James Beard Awards finalist for Best Chef in the Southwest Region and member of the Navajo Nation. He owns Pioche Food Group, which caters and serves food for private events.  

The four chefs compete in three courses on “Chopped,” where they receive a basket full of mystery ingredients to work with, like sumac and whitefish for the appetizer round, according to Food Network.  

Gladstone said she considers herself a competitive person, but on “Chopped,” she recognized she was competing for her community rather than against her community.  

“I think that was kind of an interesting intersection of just getting to do something really fun, but also, I figured that the longer I could make it on the show, the more I could keep talking about how important the work of revitalizing Indigenous foods is,” Gladstone said.  

She hopes people can learn a little bit more about the diversity of indigenous foods as well as the diversity of their communities. As someone with Cherokee and Blackfeet heritage, Gladstone represents the Northern Great Plains and Rockies, but the show also explores cuisines from other contestants’ tribes: the Pueblo, Navajo and Great Lakes communities.  

“That's really important for folks to be able to learn more about. I think the greater population in the U.S. still homogenizes Native people in many ways. So I think it's cool just to be able to see what we have across our different communities,” Gladstone said.  

The baskets revealed ingredients that not everyone had worked with before, playing into that classic “Chopped” panic. It took her back to her debate team days at Glacier High School, where there was a looming clock counting down.  

“There’s a certain type of stress from cooking in a different kitchen. I’m always like ‘OK, where is everything? I need a blender, a strainer or like, an ingredient that I’m familiar with.’ And I’m walking between other people cooking and their workstations, which is kind of high stress,” she said.  

It’s not Gladstone’s first time on television. She was twice a featured guest on “The Today Show” — showcasing recipes she teaches on Indigikitchen. Most recently, she released a children’s cookbook called “Mountains to Oceans: Kids Recipes From Native Land,” which features more than 40 kid-friendly recipes for cooking with Native foods.  

“That's been really cool to see because making a kid's cookbook inevitably drags parents and grandparents into cooking and eating new things with those kids,” she said.  

A link to purchase the book can be found on www.indigikitchen.com, along with recipes for Gladstone’s latest creations, like green chile potato hominy stew and sunflower seed cheesecake.  

For more information about tonight’s episode of “Chopped,” visit www.foodnetwork.com/shows/chopped/.  

    Chefs Justin Pioche, Mariah Gladstone, Ray Naranjo and Jessica Walks First as seen on Chopped. (courtesy of Food Network)
  

    Mariah Gladstone cooks in the first round of Chopped's "Indigenous Inspired" episode. (photo courtesy of Food Network)