‘Chopped’ crowns Navajo Chef Justin Pioche as Indigenous champion | Entertainment

Cheers of “Yéégo, Justin! Yéégo!” erupted and the Navajo Nation flag waved at a hometown watch party as Navajo Chef Justin Pioche hustled to beat the timer on the Food Network’s first-ever Indigenous-themed “Chopped” competition, “Indigenous Inspiration.”

By the time it was all over, Pioche had claimed the crown as the “Chopped” champion after a friendly but fierce competition with three other Indigenous chefs – Mariah Gladstone, Blackfeet and Cherokee; Ray Naranjo, Santa Clara Pueblo; and Jessica Walks First, Menominee.

“It was all about harmony, and we had the same agenda: promoting Native foods, Native business and all the above,” Pioche told ICT as the episode aired for the first time on April 21, 2026.

More than 100 people turned out in Farmington, New Mexico, for the party, which featured hand fans, stickers, gold necklaces, party horns and other hand-outs with Pioche’s image. Every big screen in the restaurant and on the patio played “Chopped.” 

The entire restaurant erupted into applause, screams and woos after the Food Network announced the “Chopped” champion was the Navajo Nation’s very own. The room shook with excitement and joy. Hands and phones flew up to capture the moment.

Pioche smiled and walked around the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant high-fiving and hugging family, friends, community members, and fellow “Chopped” lovers, while his sister and sous chef, Tia Pioche, captured her brother and the restaurant’s energy on her phone for social media.

Like all viewers, it was Pioche’s first time watching the pre-taped episode. Pioche runs the family catering and private dining business, Pioche Food Group, from Fruitland, New Mexico, with his sister and mom, Janice Pioche. 

“It was pretty fun,” he said after his win was announced. “I really enjoyed seeing everyone else’s reaction. It was really exciting.”

The “Indigenous Inspiration” episode included the four Native competitors and two prominent Native American chefs among the three-judge panel of experts, with “Sioux Chef” Sean Sherman and Prairie Band Potawatomi Chef Pyet DeSpain joining Chef Eric Adjepong, who is Ghanian, at the judges’ table.

Mystery baskets revealed

The three-round competition featured a host of Indigenous foods in “mystery” baskets to be used for appetizers, entrees and desserts. The baskets included familiar Indigenous ingredients such as bison, whitefish, pemmican, sumac berries, pawpaw pulp, as well as some wild cards, such as sweet corn ice cream bars shaped like ears of corn.

The celebrity chefs were quick to note the special nature of the episode.

“Tonight isn’t just about competition — it’s about visibility,” said Chef Pyet, as she is known, on social media. “To see Indigenous chefs, ingredients, and foodways highlighted on a platform like Food Network means something deeper. It’s a step toward honoring the original people of this land and recognizing the richness and diversity of the cuisines that shape America.”

She continued, “Grateful for every chef who showed up, every story shared, and every person behind the scenes who helped bring this to life. May this be one of many.”

Host Ted Allen acknowledged the significance at the beginning of the show.

“For this special competition, we are honored to have four chefs whose culinary points of view are so deeply aligned with their Indigenous communities and cultures,” he said. “We are very excited to be inspired by what you create on the plate.”

Round one: Appetizers

The three-course competition started with appetizers, with the mystery basket containing whitefish, sumac, pawpaw pulp and small fry breads called kahsherohni.

The chefs got to work, whipping up on the spot dishes using techniques and adapted menus from their regions. Pioche made sauteed whitefish with pawpaw salsa and even went an extra step — which may have contributed to his win — saying, “I have some sumac boiling right now, so I’ll make a little tea for you guys. A little treat.”

Sherman took notice.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Seems like Justin’s clearly showing a lot of expertise behind that ingredient.”

Pioche also provided some important Indigenous health information as he continued, drawing attention to the avoidance of processed sugars and flour. 

“I’m going to finish the tea with a little bit of agave, because it’s lower on the glycemic index,” he said on the program. “European ingredients that were introduced to us in the Americas, like dairy, wheat flour and cane sugar just don’t sit well. [Sumac tea] is something that’s healing for my people. Whenever we have an upset stomach, that’s what we drink.

Gladstone had an issue with the kahsherohni, noting its roots in colonizations.

“Frybread comes from a time when we were dependent on government ration boxes,” she said. “We created frybread with those things so we didn’t have to face starvation. But frybread isn’t exactly super healthy. I just don’t incorporate it a lot.”

She used the bread, however, to form an open-faced sandwich with sumac, whitefish, pawpaw sauce with raspberries and quick-pickled onions.

The two chefs from arid New Mexico, Naranjo and Pioche, wrestled a bit with the whitefish, which is not something they generally cook with.

Naranjo made a sumac-dusted, white fish tostada with a pawpaw aioli, saying, “The story that I like with my food is that when you eat food from the Southwest and Mexican cultures, it’s also Indigenous and often overlooked.”

Sherman chimed in, saying, “I really love that you’re utilizing some of the Mexican styling here because Mexican food is more Indigenous than it is European.”

Walks First made a pan-seared sumac and garlic white fish with pawpaw maple glaze, but was chopped from the first round, leaving the stage in tears but proud to have been there.

“You know, being right here, today, all of us, we have families that look up to us, communities that look up to us,” she said. “It’s a big step for every one of us, and for my grandchildren and child to see that it is okay to chase their dreams.”

Round Two: Bring on the bison

The chefs got creative with the basket of ingredients for the main course, which included bison steaks, anaheim chiles, lima beans and that oddball corn ice cream.

Gladstone made bison steak strips on top of ice-cream fritters, with a creamy chile sauce. Pioche made a chile rub for the ribeyes, with charred lima beans and sweet corn grits.

Chef Naranjo was chopped because his sweet corn ice cream got lost in a bean/corn mush he made as a side dish to the bison.

He took it in stride.

“I don’t see that as a loss at all,” he said. “I see that as an important way to show what we’re all about. So, hey, it’s a good thing.”

Round Three: A sweet finish

Chefs Pioche and Gladstone squared off the final round by making a dessert with the basket of pemmican, Saskatoon berries, sweet potatoes, and stone-milled whole wheat flour. The judges noted the inclusion of flour.

“It’s going to be interesting, because … both of these chefs don’t typically use wheat flour; it is not indigenous to the Americas,” Chef Pyet said. “But this particular wheat flour is coming from Ramona Farms,  an heirloom brand of wheat that a particular tribe has been saving and growing. So it’s got a lot of cultural meaning to them.”

Pioche made a bread pudding with candied pemmican and cognac cream. 

“The pemmican in Lakota  is a dehydrated bison, a big part of our food sources,” he said. “We would pound that out with a little bit of berries and fat.”

Gladstone made a sweet potato muffin with a pemmican and berry sauce, with maple candy walnuts. She adapted a recipe she has included in her cookbook for children.

“We call them saba berries back on Blackfeet Reservation, and the meat and the berries, we make soup out of it. It’s ceremony food for us,” she said.

”I feel like this is a dish to show people that Native foods, like Native people, are not living in the past,” she said. “We’re here. We’re doing something amazing every day in the 21st century.”

Pioche’s pemmican bread pudding caught the judge’s attention, after a misfiring spray bottle became an artful presentation on the plates.

“I love whimsicalness. For me this was like a celebration of textures,” DeSpain said.

“There are so many different little crunchy bits, but yet softness from the bread pudding. I love the way it’s cooked. It still has a sponginess to it,“ noted Sherman.

“I love the knife skills as well, man, on the sweet potato. Perfect uniform cubes, they’re all candied, perfectly,” added Adjepong.

In the end Gladstone was chopped because of the appetizer round, with judges saying the frybread was too thick and overwhelming. That left Pioche as the “Chopped” champion, and he humbly grinned as it was announced.

“It feels really good,” he said. “I feel really ecstatic and I can’t believe that I really pulled through.

I had some really tough competition.” 

He told Allen his family should share the credit.

“It would mean a lot to me because my family has always been behind me,” he said. “My sister is my sous chef and co-owner. My mom is our manager. They deserve as much bragging rights as I do because they’re the ones who live in the area.”

‘So proud of my boy’

Pioche’s mother and sister watched proudly from the crowd at the watch party in Farmington. His mother said she was grateful to the fans and community members who came out to support her son.

“My mind is ready to explode. So happy. So proud of my boy,” she said while smiling and fighting through happy tears. “It’s been so exciting, just waiting  … Finally Tuesday, April 21, came. I’m so ecstatic … My mind and my heart are overflowing.”

His sister, Tia, was just as proud.

“The excitement of the whole restaurant, it really brought tears to my eyes because he’s such a special person,” Tia Pioche said. “Nobody else deserves it but him. It’s why I’m so proud and choked up a little bit. The adrenaline is still in me. We’re so happy and proud of him and being able to share this with everybody was so cool.” 

Justin said he’ll likely invest the $10,000 prize money into Pioche Food Group since they are busy and are getting busier. They’ll need new equipment.  

This story was originally published by ICT and is republished with permission. To view the original story, visit https://ictnews.org/news/chopped-crowns-navajo-chef-justin-pioche-as-indigenous-champion/.