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СпутникиРНSpaceXРоскосмосNASAWhen there’s chislic around, a cold beer and saltines must also be on hand.
By Jed Portman
Published Aug. 14, 2026 Updated Aug. 14, 2026
On a recent trip to Denver for a Morgan Wallen concert, Nancy Kreulen was craving chislic.
“Every restaurant I went to, I was looking for it,” said Ms. Kreulen, a retired teacher and an owner of A Homestead Brew, a brewery in Valley Springs, S.D.
“The three girls I was with — one’s from Denver, one’s from Minneapolis, one’s from California — said, ‘Nancy, don’t you know that’s a South Dakota thing?’”
If you live in southeastern South Dakota, like Ms. Kreulen, you might be surprised to learn chislic isn’t as common as chicken wings. Inside the so-called Chislic Circle, a 30-mile radius around the town of Freeman, defined by the writer Rich Preheim in 2005, the meat skewer has been part of the culture for generations. In and around nearby Sioux Falls, the state’s largest city, new takes have popped up on bar and restaurant menus in recent years, encouraged by the South Dakota Legislature’s 2018 decision to name chislic the “state nosh.”
Chislic isn’t a hard sell. “It’s meat nuggets with garlic salt, on a saltine, with a cold Busch Light,” said Jon Lauck, a Midwest-focused historian who lives in Sioux Falls. Historically made from mutton, but now just as often beef, skewered or loose, deep-fried or griddled, it has obvious appeal as a bar snack or appetizer. And yet, it’s hardly crossed state lines.
Its closest relative is on the other side of the world: Shashlik, a meat skewer that’s related in both the linguistic and culinary senses to shish kebab, still sizzles on charcoal grills across the former Soviet bloc.
Shashlik came to southeastern South Dakota in the late 1800s with “Germans from Russia” — ethnic Germans who homesteaded in the Russian Empire, where they presumably learned to make mutton or lamb skewers from their Crimean neighbors, before moving to the Midwest. Over time, they adapted it to the realities of life on the Plains.
“To me, it has to be sheep, and it has to be on a stick,” said Abby Streyle, manager at Meridian Corner in Freeman, S.D.Credit...Ben Brewer for The New York Times
Mrs. Streyle frying up chislic.Credit...Ben Brewer for The New York Times
Wooden skewers replaced metal shampur blades. A post-cook sprinkle of garlic salt echoes the garlicky marinades still used along the Black Sea. To soak up the meat juices, South Dakotans use crackers instead of flatbreads. And so, too, did the cooking style change: In the settlers’ austere new surroundings, deep-fat frying was apparently more practical than grilling.
“On a treeless prairie, you don’t have the lumber to grill meat over coals,” said Marnette Hofer, the executive director of the Heritage Hall Museum and Archives in Freeman and an organizer of the town’s popular Chislic Festival.
Settlers had plenty of tallow on hand from farmstead butchering. Heating a kettle of fat, which could be done with cheap fuel like corn cobs or dried grass, was more efficient than building a coal bed from precious hardwoods.
That’s the story behind what Ms. Hofer and others in the Chislic Circle consider real chislic: snack-size skewers of mutton — often just called “sheep” — or lamb, deep-fried to a crisp medium-rare and served with garlic salt and saltines.
“To me, it has to be sheep, and it has to be on a stick,” said Abby Streyle, manager at Meridian Corner, a roadhouse outside Freeman, S.D., that still serves the traditional version, along with nearby bars and restaurants, such as Beer Garden in Menno and the Dugout in Tripp. “Otherwise, it’s not chislic.”
Most of the chislic in South Dakota no longer meets that standard.
At the 65-year-old Bud’s Tavern in Marion, less than 20 minutes away from Freeman, Adam Stewart, the owner, explained that he finally took his mutton chislic off the stick because the cost of skewering was too great. “Our chislic was stuck” — meaning skewered — “for many years,” he said, “but I’d have to charge almost twice as much for that.” He doesn’t think an order should cost $30.
In other parts of the state, chislic can look a lot like steak tips: cubed beef, served loose. Beef is easy for restaurants to get, and more familiar in newer markets like Sioux Falls.
“We have a beef culture in South Dakota,” Mr. Lauck said. “People tend to revert to beef.”
Kevin Huber, the chief executive of IT Outlet in Brandon, who has been advertising his firm with rapid-fire chislic tasting videos since 2020, has tried more than 120 versions of chislic, mostly in the Sioux Falls area. “The true chislic is sheep with saltines and garlic salt,” he said, adding, “but if we’ve found 15 sheep offerings in Sioux Falls, we’ve worked damn hard to find them.”
The drift toward beef is just the beginning.
Kyle Sturzenbecher of Sheep Flockers won Best Traditional Chislic at the Chislic Festival in 2019, 2021 and 2022.Credit...Ben Brewer for The New York Times
Sheep Flockers, a regional food truck with a cult following, specializes in mutton chislic, as its name suggests.Credit...Ben Brewer for The New York Times
Sheep Flockers, a regional food truck with a cult following, specializes in mutton chislic, as its name suggests, but also sells beef and pork chislic. Red Rock Bar and Grill in Rowena, which topped the Sioux Falls Argus Leader’s local chislic rankings, uses mutton, beef and white-meat chicken. In 2018, a sleek fast-casual concept called Urban Chislic opened in a Sioux Falls strip mall, eventually serving lamb, beef, fish, pork, chicken, bison, pheasant, venison and alligator bites, with 18 sauce and nine dry-rub options. (Its tagline? “Experience the Chislic Revolution.”) Guy Fieri praised the sticky-sweet, cheese-smothered pork chislic barbecue sandwich, before Urban Chislic shut down in 2024.
The steakification of chislic includes a transition from deep-fryer to flattop griddle, which some restaurateurs and diners strongly prefer. “When you fry chislic, it gets tough on the outside, chewy and barely done on the inside,” said Kyle Sturzenbecher of Sheep Flockers, which won Best Traditional Chislic at the Chislic Festival in 2019, 2021 and 2022, adding, “When you cook it on the flattop, it’s like eating a steak.”
Kenny Konrad of Kaylor Locker has been selling skewers in the Chislic Circle since the 1960s.Credit...Ben Brewer for The New York Times
Chislic is changing. It’s also thriving. Yes, some restaurants now serve it with sides of barbecue sauce and ranch. But as the dish gains popularity, a new generation of chislic tourists is seeking out the skewered-mutton original. And adaptation has been part of chislic’s story since before it was shashlik, which itself came from a long line of meat skewers cooked over nomads’ ancient campfires.
Even one of the most senior members of chislic’s old guard has warmed to a new approach: “I’ve got customers who air fry it, and that’s the only way they’ll eat it,” said Kenny Konrad of Kaylor Locker in Kaylor, who’s been selling skewers in the Chislic Circle since the 1960s. “They’ll come in: ‘You ever try the air fryer?’ Yeah. ‘You like it, don’t you?’ Well, yeah. You won’t overcook it that way. It’ll stay nice and juicy.”
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