The regional table / South Dakota

Chislic

Published September 23, 2026 · South Dakota

The fat has to climb back to temperature between batches, and that is the whole difference between chislic and boiled lamb.

South Dakota is one of the few states whose bar food is on the statute book, and the operative text is short enough to print whole. Senate Bill 96 of the Ninety-third Legislative Assembly was first read in the Senate on 19 January 2018, carrying eighteen senators and sixteen representatives as sponsors — Senator Nelson prime in the Senate, Representative Schoenfish prime in the House — and Section 1 of the enrolled act reads: "That chapter 1-6 be amended by adding a NEW SECTION to read: Chislic is hereby designated as the official nosh of South Dakota." It was not a formality. Senate State Affairs sent it out 6 to 2 on 2 February and the Senate passed it 22 to 12; then House Health and Human Services deadlocked on 8 February, where a motion to pass it failed 6 to 5 and a motion to kill it failed 6 to 5 as well, and the chair deferred it. The committee minutes name the men who came to Pierre to speak for it: Gary Jerke of Tripp, Frank Kloucek of Scotland, Bill Aschelman of Hurley, Tom Harmon of Pierre. The first three of those towns sit within a short drive of each other in the Hutchinson County country, which is as close as a document will bring you to where chislic lives. The same committee passed it 9 to 2 on 22 February, the House passed it 45 to 19 on 27 February, and the Governor signed it on 8 March 2018.

The word is harder than the law. It is usually traced to a Turkic term for skewered meat carried out of south Russia by the German colonists, and the dictionaries half-support that. Redhouse's Turkish and English Lexicon of 1890 gives shish as "A spit" and "A skewer", glosses the verb built on it "To spit or skewer", and twenty lines further down the same column prints shishek, "A lamb in his second year" — skewer, spitting and yearling mutton, all within one page. What Redhouse does not have is the suffixed form the usual etymology needs, and an Ottoman lexicon cannot settle what a Crimean Tatar dialect did with the word in any case. Chislic itself is in no dictionary I could open; Merriam-Webster has no entry for it. Nor could I find it written down in South Dakota. A South Dakota Guide, the Federal Writers' Project volume of 1938, stops at Freeman and calls it "the center of a German-Russian community. Although coming to the United States from Russia, they are of German descent", then discusses surnames and farming methods and names not one thing anybody ate; the guide's only use of the word mutton is at a Norwegian wedding banquet in another county. The Vermillion community newspaper archive, which holds Clay County papers from 1862 onward, returns nothing for chislic, chislick, schislic or shishlik while returning ten hits for kuchen, and Nebraska's open archive returns nothing at all. So there is no first chislic here, no family and no year, and this article invents none. The quantities below were worked out for this page.

Why this version works

Lamb is not a compromise here. The USDA put the case for it in 1913, in Farmers' Bulletin 526, "Mutton and Its Value in the Diet" by C. F. Langworthy and Caroline L. Hunt: "That quality of mutton which makes it absorb odors and flavors easily is an advantage in cooking, for its own flavor combines easily with that of the various seasonings." That is the argument for garlic salt on lamb in one sentence, written a century before the statute.

Three-quarter-inch cubes, not one-inch. A cube that size browns on every face in the time its middle takes to go from raw to rosy. Go up to an inch and you are choosing between a pale crust and a grey centre, because the fat cannot get through that much meat before the outside overcooks.

The garlic salt goes on the moment it leaves the oil. Salt sticks to the film of hot fat on a cube and to nothing else. Thirty seconds later the surface has set and most of what you shake on falls to the bottom of the bowl. Salt in the pan, over the paper, while it is still hissing.

The fat is at 375°F when the meat goes in — and again for the next lot. Two pounds of cold cubes will drag a pot of oil down fifty degrees in seconds, and meat sitting in slack fat steams in its own juice instead of crusting. Fry a third of it at a time and wait for the thermometer to climb back before the next handful.

Ingredient notes

Fat: six cups of a neutral oil with a high smoke point, peanut or canola. Use a heavy pot that the oil fills no more than a third of the way, because wet meat makes it climb. Beef tallow is closer to what a small-town kitchen would have had and it fries beautifully; it also sets solid on the plate as it cools.

Meat: two pounds of boneless lamb sirloin or well-trimmed shoulder. Mutton is the traditional meat and hardly ever for sale; beef sirloin and venison loin are what most South Dakota kitchens use now and both are good. What will not work is stewing beef — chuck and round cubes are sold for three hours in liquid, and three minutes in fat leaves them rubber.

Saltines: not a garnish. The cracker takes the fat off your fingers between cubes and keeps the salt from stacking up, which is why a plate of chislic in a bar comes with a sleeve of them and a jar of toothpicks and nothing else on it.

Garlic salt: the whole seasoning, and it belongs at the end rather than in a marinade. If you would rather mix your own, three parts fine salt to one part granulated garlic is about what the jars are. Garlic powder alone scorches in hot fat, which is the reason this is a finishing salt and not a rub.

Step by step

Cut and dry the meat. Trim the lamb of gristle and all but a thin edge of fat and cut it into cubes of about three-quarters of an inch. Spread them on a tray lined with paper towels, pat the tops dry and leave them uncovered for 20 minutes while the fat heats. Surface water is what makes oil spit and what stops a crust forming.
Heat the fat. Pour the oil into a heavy pot no more than a third full and bring it to 375°F over medium-high heat, with a thermometer clipped to the side. Set a rack or a tray of paper towels next to the stove and put the garlic salt, the kosher salt and the pepper within reach of it.
Fry the first third. Lower about a third of the cubes into the fat with a spider and fry 2½ to 3 minutes, stirring once, until they are dark brown on most faces and firm to a press. They should sizzle hard the whole time; if the noise drops to a mutter, the pot is too full.
Salt it hot. Lift the batch onto the paper, shake over a third of the garlic salt and a pinch of the kosher salt and pepper, and toss it with the spider while it is still glistening. Do this before the next batch goes in, not at the end.
Fry and salt the rest. Let the fat come back to 375°F — it takes a minute or two — and repeat with the second and third batches, salting each one as it comes out. The last batch will be the darkest because the oil is cleanest at the start and hottest at the end; give it fifteen seconds less.
Serve at once. Tip the lot into a warm bowl or a shallow pan, stick a toothpick in a few of them, and put the saltines and the hot sauce on the same plate. Chislic is at its best about ninety seconds out of the fat and noticeably worse after ten minutes.

Grey, wet-looking cubes mean the fat was under temperature or the pot was overloaded, and the cure is the next batch rather than that one — raise the heat, wait for 375°F and halve the handful. Cubes that are dark but chewy went in too big; cut the rest smaller. If the salt has all ended up in the bottom of the bowl, you salted too late: put the bowl back over low heat for twenty seconds, toss, and salt the next lot straight out of the fat.

Storage and make-ahead

Chislic does not keep in any way worth defending. Refrigerated it will be safe for three days and it will taste like cold fried lamb, because the crust softens within the hour and nothing brings it back.

If you must reheat leftovers, spread them on a tray in a 425°F oven for 6 minutes rather than a microwave, and salt them again afterwards. Better: fry only what will be eaten, and cut the second pound while the first is going.

What to serve with it

Saltines, a jar of toothpicks and something cold. Beer is the obvious answer and the one the bars give. If you are making a meal of it rather than a snack, the plate wants something sharp and raw against all that salt — sliced cucumbers in vinegar, or a dish of dill pickles — and nothing else fried.

From the recipe box / South Dakota

Chislic

Cubes of lamb fried hard in deep fat, hit with garlic salt the second they come out, and eaten off toothpicks with saltines — the official nosh of South Dakota by act of the legislature.

Prep: 25 min
Cook: 15 min
Total: 40 min
Serves: 6
Calories: 460 per serving

Ingredients

Scale

2 pounds boneless lamb sirloin or trimmed shoulder, cut into ¾-inch cubes
6 cups peanut or canola oil, for frying
2 teaspoons garlic salt
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 sleeve saltine crackers, to serve
Hot sauce, to serve
Wooden toothpicks, to serve

Instructions

Trim the lamb and cut it into ¾-inch cubes. Spread on paper towels, pat dry and leave uncovered 20 minutes.
Heat the oil to 375°F in a heavy pot filled no more than a third, with a thermometer clipped on and a paper-lined tray beside the stove.
Fry a third of the cubes 2½–3 minutes, stirring once, until dark brown and firm.
Lift onto the paper and toss at once with a third of the garlic salt and a pinch each of kosher salt and pepper, while still glistening.
Bring the fat back to 375°F and repeat with the second and third batches, salting each as it comes out.
Tip into a warm bowl and serve immediately with saltines, hot sauce and toothpicks.

Nutrition

Fat	26 g (10 g saturated)
Sodium	1010 mg
Protein	29 g
Serving	about ⅓ pound of meat with crackers
Calories	460
Cholesterol	105 mg
Carbohydrates	11 g (0 g sugar, 0 g fiber)

Nutrition is an estimate calculated from the listed ingredients and is provided as a courtesy, not as dietary advice.

Questions readers ask

Lamb or beef?

Both are eaten and the statute settles neither — it designates chislic and defines nothing. Lamb and mutton are the older meat and the reason garlic salt is the seasoning; beef sirloin and venison are common now and behave the same way in the fat, though beef needs about thirty seconds less and venison less again because it has almost no fat to lose.

Why saltines?

They do a job. The cracker wipes the fat off your fingers between cubes and blunts the salt, which is why a bar plate holds chislic, crackers and toothpicks and nothing else. Any plain salted cracker works; a seasoned one fights the garlic salt.

Deep-fried or grilled?

Both are done. Threaded onto skewers and grilled over hot coals the cubes take about 6 minutes and turn out drier and smokier; fried, they keep more juice and take a harder crust. Whichever you choose, the salt goes on the instant they come off the heat.

Can I do it in a skillet or an air fryer?

A skillet with an inch of fat works if you turn the cubes and accept a flat side that browns twice as hard — fry in two batches rather than three, since the pan recovers faster than a deep pot. An air fryer gives you roasted lamb cubes, which are pleasant and are not this; without deep fat the crust is thin and the salt has little to stick to.